Simon van den Bergh was a Dutch businessperson. He founded a margarine factory in the Netherlands that became world-famous.

In 1888, the same year his son Samuel

Samuel van den Bergh

Samuel van den Bergh was one of the main European margarine and soap manufacturers in the early 20th century....

 joined the company, he opened a factory in Kleve

Kleve

Kleve , is a town in the Lower Rhine region of northwestern Germany near the Dutch border and the River Rhine. From the 11th century onwards, Kleve was capital of a county and later a duchy...

, the Van den Bergh Margarine Works. By announcing it was for the industrial manufacture of margarine, he was able to circumvent the high tariffs of the German Reich on butter and margarine. The factory introduced the Sanella brand in 1904, made from almond milk.

In the summer of 1929 (after the death of Simon van den Bergh) the Jurgens & Prince Margarine Works in Goch and Van den Bergh in Kleve merged to become Margarine Unie

Margarine Unie

The Dutch company Naamlooze Vennootschap Margarine Unie grew in the 1920s through mergers of several margarine companies, among which Centra and Schicht and above all the companies of Antonius Johannes Jurgens and Samuel van den Bergh...

. The newly merged company then combined with English soap manufacturer Lever Brothers

Lever Brothers

Lever Brothers was a British manufacturer founded in 1885 by William Hesketh Lever and his brother, James Darcy Lever . The brothers had invested in and promoted a new soap making process invented by chemist William Hough Watson, it was a huge success...

 to create the modern company Unilever

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....

.