Persil is a brand of laundry detergent

Laundry detergent

Laundry detergent, or washing powder, is a substance that is a type of detergent that is added for cleaning laundry. In common usage, "detergent" refers to mixtures of chemical compounds including alkylbenzenesulfonates, which are similar to soap but are less affected by "hard water." In most...

 currently and originally made by Henkel & Cie

Henkel

Henkel AG & Co. KGaA is an multinational company headquartered in Düsseldorf, Germany.The company operates in three business areas: Home Care , Personal Care ,...

; but which is now also licensed for manufacture, distribution, and marketing in several countries by the Unilever Corporation

Unilever

Unilever is a British-Dutch multinational corporation that owns many of the world's consumer product brands in foods, beverages, cleaning agents and personal care products....

. Henkel and Unilever both manufacture their own formulations. Introduced in 1907, Persil is notable because it was the first commercially available "self-activated" laundry detergent. The name, Persil, is derived from two of its original ingredients, perborate and silicate.