UNILEVER hopes to take its wash day rival Procter & Gamble, to the cleaners with a lion pound relaunch of its flagship Persil detergent in Britain and Ireland this summer.

The Anglo Dutch consumer group is reverting to a packaging idea first used 30 years ago.

Unilever will also drop references to housewives, to reflect social changes in the market.

The new Persil pack design features a little boy in a pristine football kit, an idea first used in 1968.

The group has been struggling to recover ground it lost in European detergents to its US rival, Procter & Gamble, when Persil Power, with a patented "accelerator" ingredient, was found to be faulty shortly after the launch in 1994 and had to be withdrawn.

Procter & Gamble manufactures Ariel.

Unilever says that this time round the so called "stain release system", to be included across the entire Persil range of powder, liquid and concentrated detergents, has been tested.

The company will spend an estimated £25 million on marketing the brand in Britain and Ireland, with about one third going on direct marketing.

Persil is the brand name for Unilever's main detergent in Britain and Ireland. Henkel of Germany owns the Persil trade name on the European continent, except in France.

Unilever's product is sold as Omo in the Netherlands, Denmark, Switzerland, Finland and Norway.

In 1994 Persil and Ariel were about level in terms of market share, at about 26 per cent each of Britain's £900 million fabrics cleaning market.

By 1995 Persil's share had slipped to 21.6 per cent before recovering slightly to 22.3 per cent in February 1996, according to figures from the independent market survey IRI Infoscan.

Each percentage point of market share is worth about £9 million in sales.