Our business model

We employ our own local, science-focused sales force who understand our customers. This is unusual in our markets where sales are often through distributors. This direct selling model builds relationships with customers and provides us with insights about their challenges, as well as changing consumer behaviour, that are key to how we innovate. We complement direct selling with local innovation centres where we co-formulate with customers in our laboratories and accelerate their time-to-market.

We are the leading innovator in our markets with a technology portfolio differentiated by valuable protected intellectual property and know-how, including 1,500 patents across 250 patent families. This means our ingredients have unique characteristics and deliver higher value add. We have a collaborative, open innovation model which combines internal R&D with partnering and technology acquisitions. We are becoming a more knowledge-intensive company as a result of this innovation ecosystem and our recent acquisitions.

United by our strong sense of Purpose and our values, we work as one team. We promote a ‘One Croda’ culture through our Remuneration Policy and high levels of employee share ownership which encourages everyone to work together to achieve our goals. We strive to be more agile and entrepreneurial than our competitors, with a decentralised operating model that ensures decisions are made ‘close to customers’.

We grow by creating new market and technology niches rather than by winning market share in large established markets. We target fast-growth niches that value our leadership in innovation and sustainability through higher margins. This allows us to compete on value rather than on price, supporting our goal of delivering profit growth, ahead of sales growth, ahead of volume growth.

There is no one big competitor that spans all our markets; instead, there are different competitors in each of our niches. We have a broad base of customers, large and small. This high number of customer/product combinations reduces our exposure to any specific customer, market or geography.

We sell in test tube and vial quantities, rather than tanker loads, and are increasingly moving to selling in dollars per gram rather than dollars per kilo. This means we operate flexible, capital-light manufacturing sites, rather than large continuous operation plants, and do not have to invest significant capital to create value.

We were founded in 1925 to create lanolin from wool grease, a by-product of the textile industry, and have been building sustainability into our business ever since. Now, we have a long-term sustainability strategy embedded in the way we work to ensure we deliver on our Commitment to be the world’s most sustainable supplier of innovative ingredients by 2030. With consumers determined to make a positive impact through the products they buy, the creation of sustainable ingredients is a key driver of our future commercial success.