Chief Executive statement on sustainability at Croda
“By thinking boldly, acting with purpose, and living our values every day, we are bringing Smart science to improve lives™ to life and working hard to achieve our commitment to be the most sustainable supplier of innovative ingredients by 2030, delivering solutions to tackle some of the world’s biggest challenges”
A more focused strategy, prioritising areas that customers value most and where Croda can have the greatest impact.
For just over a century, Croda’s innovative ingredients have helped customers deliver better impacts, from trend-setting sun protection to sustainable agriculture and vaccines. We look different to our peers in the eyes of our customers: most of our raw material volume is from biobased not petrochemical sources; we sell small quantities of novel ingredients to customers of all sizes that can provide mission-critical sustainability benefits to their formulations. That legacy of impact continues, and we now look ahead with our updated purpose-led 2030 growth strategy.
2025 saw the global outlook for the environment and our society become increasingly fractured. We have witnessed the expansion and escalation of conflicts, a multitude of extreme weather events amplified by climate change, and widespread societal and political polarisation.
In this context we have been testing our stakeholders’ priorities. While we recognise many customers are focused on the short term, limiting demand for sustainable solutions in 2026, I have been impressed to see the continuing commitment from leading customers across all markets and regions to improve their impacts on planet and people. They recognise the importance of leading suppliers, like Croda, in helping them deliver on their ambitious sustainability goals.
Working with the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership we have reviewed progress towards our 2030 Commitment, mid-way through the decade. Through this work we have shifted from a top-down approach to a bottom-up strategy refresh, aligning business-level sustainability drivers with corporate targets. This has streamlined over 20 public targets to a just a handful, embedded within the corporate strategy and linked to the material impacts identified in our Double Materiality Assessment.
In 2025 SBTi revalidated our updated Science-based targets aligned with a 1.5°C trajectory including validating our commitment to become Net Zero by 2050. As part of this we have expanded the opportunities available to us to help our customers decarbonise, by including impacts on land-related emissions associated with bio-based raw materials, aligned with the latest understanding of climate science and our material impacts on nature. We have also recommitted to significantly reducing water impacts from our operations in regions with high water risk and are currently developing our wider approach to water stewardship in our value chains.
Some of the biggest impacts we have created during the first 5 years of executing our Commitment have been driving better outcomes for our people and disadvantaged communities. Croda Foundation celebrates 5 years since inception, investing with partners across the globe to sustainably improve livelihoods and access to health care. To date £6.4m of Croda’s profits have been invested in 59 projects with the Foundation. Our support of the Foundation’s work will be amplified in 2026 by an additional £1m Centenary Fund donation. I am excited to see where the projects our employees will nominate can take the Foundation’s sustainable impact this year.
Progress towards our 2030 targets increasingly requires the collaboration of multiple partners and ensuring our work meets the best of industry standards, not just minimum regulatory compliance. We have been a member of the award-winning Flue2Chem consortium (see case study) in the UK, and our work with Action for Sustainable Derivatives is driving increased transparency in palm derivative supply chains, on our way to ensuring access to deforestation-risk free ingredients for our customers.
We have also looked beyond the next 5 years and identified the key innovations required in supply chains, manufacturing processes and underlying ingredient technologies, to ensure our future technology portfolio is Net Zero-ready for our customers.
The business case for continuing to prioritise deep but focused action on sustainability is clear. It is moving our work from corporate-level activity to project-by-project solutions for customers, where better sustainability is part of the overall benefit package and drives better overall value for Croda, our customers and their consumers.
I passionately believe the world is a better place thanks to ingredients and technologies from Croda, so we must commercialise our solutions to provide their benefits to planet and society. In meeting our updated 2030 targets, we will have avoided releasing 1.2 million tonnes of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere; we will have protected an area of land from deforestation greater than the size of Singapore island; and our increasing use of raw materials sourced from renewable carbon will have avoided 350,000 barrels of crude oil being extracted.
Our focus is on growing sustainably, innovating responsibly and, most importantly, keeping our customers at the heart of everything we do. By thinking boldly, acting with purpose, and living our values every day, we are bringing Smart science to improve lives™ to life and working hard to achieve our commitment to be the most sustainable supplier of innovative ingredients by 2030, delivering solutions to tackle some of the world’s biggest challenges. Through our passion for this work, we will inspire our leaders, attract future leaders to join us and engage many on this journey. It is our people who are making this happen, so I again thank everyone at Croda and our partners for their commitment, hard work and positive approach to delivering against our impact goals, we achieve more together.