Persil Powder (all varieties, excl. Professional & Sensitive)

Use our detergent dosage calculator for a tailored dosage amount.

Long-form detergent review

Experienced members of our community test detergents with cloth nappies and general laundry.

Excellent option. All varieties except Persil Sensitive contain enzymes and wash well at 40ºC.

OMO/ Persil is a leading brand of detergent across Australia and New Zealand. It’s reliable, readily available and performs well in liquid, powder, dilutables and capsules. 

Unilever (the brand owner) often reuses base formulas and tweaks them slightly to appeal to different consumer needs. This creates a new variant without needing to overhaul the formulation. Sometimes, the only difference is in fragrance profile, something that is not reflected in the public ingredient list.

Each variant performs similarly, with the Ultimate range performing slightly better on stubborn stains.

Product varieties

We scored the ingredients list on the Unilever website to determine which varieties contain enzymes.

Out of interest, we compared the listed ingredients for Ultimate Powder, Expert Odour Eliminator Powder and Expert Antibacterial Powder. The identical ingredient lists indicate that these products share the same base formulation. Any differences in product performance are likely due to variations in the specific fragrance components, which are not detailed in the ingredient lists.

Persil Professional

We find Persil Professional performs similarly, but needs a slightly large dose of detergent.

Unfortunately, Unilever does not list ingredients for the professional range alongside their other products. We reached out to Unilever in both Australia and New Zealand to confirm which varieties contain enzymes. 

Parent company: Unilever