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Our strategy

Sustainability + Innovation = Growth

Our strategy is to combine leadership in sustainability with market-leading innovation to deliver consistent top and bottom-line growth, with profit growing ahead of sales, ahead of volume. This enables us to help to meet global challenges and capture new opportunities. By doing so, we create lasting value for our stakeholders and pave the way for a more resilient, sustainable future.

2023 Annual Report

Annual report
15.2 MB

2023 Reporting datapack

Our strategy delivers:

Sustainability

Sustainability

Consumers globally are looking to play their part in living more sustainably through the products that they buy. We enable customers to meet their sustainability goals through the sustainable benefits in use of our innovation and by improving the impact of our operations and supply chains. This includes removing fossil based ingredients, reducing emissions, restoring biodiversity and ensuring transparency through our supply chains. Our restorative sustainability strategy is built on 23 UN SDG targets, grouped around the themes of climate, nature and society, hence our commitment to be Climate, Land and People Positive by 2030.
innovation

Innovation

We grow by creating new market and technology niches, so our success is dependent on our ability to deliver innovative solutions to customers. The foundation of our innovation model is internal R&D investment, applying the expertise of our scientists to meet customer needs. This is complemented by our open innovation network, providing access to over 500 universities and SMEs to help develop new intellectual property. In addition, we look to acquire technologies with disruptive potential that can be scaled through organic investment, further bolstering our innovation pipeline.
Find out more about our Group and sector strategies
Smart science to improve lives™
Sustainability
Innovation
Scale biotechnology
Scaling biotechnology is enabling ingredients to be produced using techniques such as fermentation, significantly improving the sustainability profile of manufacturing processes and raw materials.
Doing the basics brilliantly
Our 'doing the basics brilliantly' programme drives continuous operational improvements, aimed at improving the customer experience and increasing employee productivity by leveraging digital technologies and streamlining processes.
Strengthen to grow consumer care
In Consumer Care we aim to be the most sustainable, responsive supplier of innovative ingredients. We are strengthening the portfolio through continued innovation, developing claims-based ingredients with objective and verifiable performance data provided by our advanced validation techniques. The sustainability profile of our portfolio is a source of competitive advantage and we are further strengthening the portfolio by developing new ingredients with superior sustainability credentials, including bio-based, biodegradable and low-carbon products, with validated claims data.
Expand life sciences
Our strategy in Life Sciences is to empower biologics delivery, enabling the shift to biological active ingredients in pharmaceutical and agricultural markets that will drive structural growth opportunities in the years to come. This move from chemically synthesised to biological active ingredients is already underway in pharmaceutical markets but is in its earlier stages in agricultural markets. We aim to broaden our portfolio of pharma delivery systems and bioprocessing aids through organic investment, technology partnerships and selective bolt-on acquisitions that bring a unique capability to the Group.
Proactive M&A
We look to acquire disruptive technologies and complementary bolt-on acquisitions that we can scale through organic investment in line with our 'buy and build' model. M&A is strategy-led with 'chief scouts' in Consumer Care and Life Sciences working to identify technologies of the future.
Fast grow Asia
By expanding our presence in Asia, we will be able to access high-growth markets that are developing at a faster pace with opportunities across Consumer Care and Life Sciences.