Shemen company soap Vintage Israeli poster, 1960s

The Shemen (Oil) Company was one of the pioneering industrial enterprises in Israel, located in the Haifa Bay area. Shortly after its founding in 1906, the plant was called Atid (“Future”), a name given to it by Ahad Ha’am.

The Shemen factory played a significant role in the Jewish economy in the Land of Israel before the establishment of the state. Its importance was dramatic—not only economically and politically, but also on a personal level. For the Hebrew community in Haifa, the factory held extraordinary value.
Thanks to its early existence, the Technion was established in Haifa in 1909. When Arthur Ruppin was asked where the Technion should be built, he replied: “Look where the Hebrew industry begins.”

Shemen was one of the first factories established in the new era of Jewish settlement. It originally opened in 1905 near Lod, in an area now named Ben Shemen in its memory. In 1909, the factory was relocated to Haifa. In 1919, the entrepreneur brothers Nahum and Moshe Vilbusch, along with their partner Gedalya Vilbushevitz, founded the Shemen company. The Haifa plant was completed in 1922 and officially inaugurated in 1924—its machinery operated for the first time by none other than the British High Commissioner, Herbert Samuel.

In 2021, after over a century of activity, the oil factory bearing the iconic olive tree emblem closed its doors.

פרסומת סבון שמן כרזה פוסטר  חברת שמן ארץ ישראל שנות 60