Our Strategy
We deliver shareholder value by being a leading speciality ingredient company, driving sustainable innovation, superior performance and creating value for our customers and consumers.
Innovation you can build on™
Deliver consistent top and bottom line growth
Innovation is the lifeblood of our business, playing a key role in delivering sales and profit growth. Through our technical and commercial expertise, our focus is to increase the sales of new and protected products (NPP).
We achieve this through:
- Our unrivalled local direct selling capability
- A balanced global footprint
- Accelerating sales in our core markets
- A disciplined approach to capital allocation
- Investing in high return opportunities.
- Delivered sales and profit growth in all three core sectors in constant currency
- Increased earnings per share
- Increased free cash flow
- Returned capital to shareholders.
- Deliver top line growth ahead of the markets in which we operate
- Deliver bottom line growth
- Deliver strong free cash flow
- Maintain our disciplined approach to capital allocation.
Increase the proportion of protected innovation
Through our powerful business model we connect to fast growing markets to grow profit ahead of sales, ahead of volume.
We achieve this through:
- Investing in our own R&D
- Expanding the number of regional innovation centres
- Working closer with customers to better understand their specific needs
- Identifying disruptive technologies
- Developing our Open Innovation and Smart Partnering Programmes with universities and technology enterprises
- Increased the number of innovation centres
- Completed four technology investments: Nautilus, Plant Impact, SiSaf and Cutitronics
- Acquired Biosector, a specialist supplier of human and veterinary vaccine adjuvants
- Expanded our Open Innovation network of partners to more than 450 and continued to expand our Smart Partnering Programme
- Created a global technology scouting group
- Established a Digital Centre of Excellence.
Our priorities for 2019:
- Increase collaboration with customers across core sectors
- Commercialise new technologies
- Globalise open innovation
- Acquire new technology-led companies with unique intellectual property
- Expand our digital capabilities.
Accelerate our customers’ transition to sustainable ingredients
Sustainability connects all aspects of our business. Building on our bio-based raw material heritage, we are evolving our products, technologies and supply chain to meet customer and consumer needs.
We achieve this through:
- Creating ingredients that provide a benefit in use with reduced environmental impact
- Better understanding the sustainable ingredient needs of our customers
- Acquiring technology-led companies with sustainable technologies
- Aligning our business with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) wherever possible.
What we have done in 2018:
- Acquired Nautilus, a sustainable marine biotechnology company
- Acquired Plant Impact, a biostimulants business that improves crop yield and quality
- Acquired Biosector, a leading adjuvant specialist for vaccines
- Worked on open innovation projects to identify novel, low energy, sustainable technologies
- Determined the mechanism for Carbon reduction targets, 50% by 2030 and 80% by 2050, from its 2006 level.
Our priorities in 2019:
- Develop KPIs and targets for 2030, aligned with the SDGs
- Demonstrate how our products save more greenhouse gas emissions
- Identify low carbon technologies
- Deliver an improvement in work place safety
- Demonstrate the net benefit of our use of land.