Unger’s 2025 was a year defined by sustainability, innovation, and people. We began the year with the honour of receiving the Henkel Sustainability Award at the ACI congress, while our greener UFARYL® EcoSmart range continued to gain strong market interest. Behind the scenes, our R&D team advanced several exciting projects—from enhanced limescale inhibition and greener surfactants to new functional materials—fully aligned with our 2028 innovation strategy built on Sustainability, Competence and Economy. This commitment was also reflected in our EcoVadis Gold certification, modernization of our production using AI and NIR technology, and a strong focus on developing our people through “employeeship,” inclusion, and competence-building. Highlights included the launch of UFARYL® C4 at SEPAWA, continued customer engagement worldwide, and a renewed dedication to health, safety and collaboration across the company—making 2025 both transformative and future-focused. Let's look back at the milestones that shaped this remarkable year!
The year started with the pleasure of being awarded the Henkel Sustainability Award at the ACI congress in January. We at Unger also had a new greener heavy weight in our portfolio. Our UFARYL® EcoSmart range that we launched at SEPAWA in October 2024 was getting some legs and gaining interest from our current and new customers.
Unger Fabrikker wins Henkel Sustainability Award
The early winter months were mild here in Fredrikstad, and an innovative new UFARYL® project was taking shape, with a dedicated focus on increasing the limescale inhibition performance for toilet blocks. Our R&D department has also been busy this year with future innovations that will be visible both in our Functional Materials and Surfactants portfolio in the upcoming years. These innovations range from entering the Coatings market, developing greener surfactants, improving our performance with horizontal directional drilling and beyond.
This all ties in perfectly with Unger’s recent innovation strategy, which has been set-up for 2028 where the key pillars are Sustainability, Competence and Economy. This has also been reinforced during the year by a new addition to our colleagues with a dedicated Sustainability Manager as well the certification of the EcoVadis Gold Award here at Unger during the summer.
Celebrating our Gold Medal in EcoVadis Sustainability Rating
It is not only the R&D that has been busy. Our fantastic manufacturing team has done major maintenance and modernized parts of production. We have been using artificial intelligence and near infrared technology for years in our production to minimize waste. This has also been given additional national attention in a time where digitalization and optimization is imperative to gain business.
Our sales team was as always busy visiting customers, partners and conferences.
Our HR department has been focusing on two critical topics: “How to recruit and retain talent” and “The road out of social exclusion.” These conversations reflect our commitment to building a future where competence and inclusion are at the core of industrial growth.
In 2025, we talked about our story and how we began as a traditional soap factory, but how Unger today is a high-tech company driven by innovation and sustainability. This transformation is not just about technology—it’s about people. To attract the best talent, we’ve worked hard to change the narrative: Unger is no longer just an industrial company; we are a competence-based organization. We invest in learning, offer development programs, and foster a culture built on trust and collaboration. This approach ensures that our employees grow with us—and stay with us.
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More than ever, the Scandinavian concept of medarbeiderskap - employeeship - is relevant in workplaces that are changing from hierarchical and leader-centered organizations to network organizations with an emphasis on resilient and sustainable development. This approach has wholeheartedly been adopted by us at Unger. During the year have not only have several persons in the organization taken an in-depth course over several days, but everyone at Unger has also taken part in a full introduction to employeeship with the idea that this concept will take everyone one step further both individually, as a team, and as a company.
In October, it was again time for SEPAWA, a brilliant venue for us at Unger to meet our dedicated distributors, several of our current customers, gain new business and simply have a great catch-up with the larger Unger-family through networking and laughter. This was not all we did at SEPAWA, we also launched a new product, the UFARYL® C4, a great product for limescale inhibition.
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One of the greater efforts during the year has been to make sure the strategy and vision is properly manifested into the complete organization, and it was with great precision, devotion and success that this project was executed internally through both larger boards, presentations and participation.
An annual mandatory full day session was held also this year with our HSE training day, which highlighted: Firefighting, IT security, First Aid and more.
HSE Day 2025, Firefighting training
As always, we want to thank all our committed employees, and you – our partners, customers and distributors for a fantastic 2025. Let us make 2026 a year where we push each other to be better, to do better and to execute better.
