Major detergent companies to merge ...

Vestar Capital Partners has agreed to acquire Unilever’s laundry detergents business in the U.S., Canada, and Puerto Rico for $1.45 billion. Vestar will merge the business with Huish Detergents, a Salt Lake City-based maker of private label detergents majority-owned by Vestar since April 2007. The combined company, to be called Sun Products, is expected to have annual sales of more than $2 billion. Huish is known as a leading producer of methyl ester sulfonate, a surfactant used in detergents. Unilever’s main North American plant is in Baltimore, where it manufactures surfactants and finished detergents.