Our business model
Our business model is highly differentiated and enables us to create value through direct selling and customer-focused innovation.
A key source of competitive advantage is our direct sales team who work closely with our customers and R&D colleagues globally to tailor ingredients for specific applications and formulate multiple ingredients into solutions. This allows us to better understand the unmet needs of our customers and create value through customer-focused innovation.
At its heart, Croda is a speciality ingredient company where we refine and purify mainly natural raw materials and proprietary downstream processes across derivatisation, refinement and purification, to provide ~6,000 specialty ingredients to more than 17,000 customers.
We are selling the benefit of our ingredients, not the chemistry whether that is:
- Applying our unrivalled purification expertise for drug delivery
- Utilising high throughput screening to create new beauty claims
- Tailoring ingredients to meet the demands of our crop customers
- Or using our expertise in formulation development to combine ingredients into solutions for high profile brands
And we bring this all together with world class claims which often transform the value of our customers’ brands.
Our Commitment
Creating value through customer-focused innovation
A key competitive advantage is our direct sales team who work closely with R&D colleagues to co-create solutions with our customers, supported by flexible manufacturing using mainly natural raw materials.
Global
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Problem
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Solution
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Ingredient
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Commercial
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Global
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| We sell small quantities of innovative ingredients that are vital to the performance of our customers’ products. We ensure our capabilities help customers address the challenges created by global population growth and living sustainably within planetary boundaries. | We employ our own sales teams rather than using distributors, enabling us to build close relationships with our customers, so insights about their challenged contribute directly to how we innovate. | We design innovative ingredients that deliver vital functionality with superior sustainability profiles to customer formulations, balancing between new product development, application-driven innovation, and customer-led ideas, bringing smarter solutions to market faster. | We produce ingredients to consistently high standards using bio-based raw materials at 44 sites globally, all of which have decarbonisation roadmaps in place. We operate flexible capital-light manufacturing sites, rather than large continuous operation plants, producing ingredients in small batches rather than high volumes. | We sell and deliver 6,000 ingredients directly to our customers using local warehouses and distribution for speed and flexibility. We tailor ingredients for specific applications and formulate solutions using multiple ingredients. | By using our innovative ingredients, customer maximise the impact of their products with minimum footprints, so that our smart science contributes to improving lives. We are building a more complete picture of the wider benefits in use of our ingredients by engaging with customers to understand their full lifecycle. | |||||
18%
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16,000
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1,700
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58%
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>90%
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>290,000
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Leveraging our core capabilities
| Proprietary chemistries We use mainly natural raw materials and proprietary downstream processes across derivatisation, refinement and purification, to provide 6,000 specialty ingredients to more than 16,000 customers. |
> | Shared production Our businesses leverage core capabilities to meet customer needs. Ingredients sold into multiple markets and produced at shared manufacturing facilities, accounting for ~60% of our sales and ~70% of our sales volumes. |
> | Shared R&D By leveraging shared R&D expertise, formulation advice, and testing, we create value for customers. |
> | Global direct-to-customers sales team With close alignment between our sales, marketing and R&D teams we develop deep relationships with multinationals, 'regional giants' and local customers. |
¹United Nations World Population Prospects 2024.
²Cumulative land area saved 2020-24 above a 2019 baseline as a result of the use of our crop and seed technologies.
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Our investment case
