Building Customer Value Globally
Building Customer Value Globally
Croda’s Global Reorganisation and Investments Aimed at Increasing Customer Value
During Croda’s Annual Suppliers’ Day Press Breakfast, Penny Vanemon, Global Vice President Marketing Personal Care, shared how the company is making organisational changes and investing in the future to deliver innovation and inspiration to its customers around the world.
Ms. Vanemon, whose global role within Croda includes developing and directing coordinated marketing strategies, explained that the company underwent a global reorganisation in May 2014 to address challenges faced with its former regional structure. Now one year later and past the initial transition, the new global structure, organized by market segment, is focused on transparency and sharing of information among regions to leverage internal expertise and offer customers faster and better access to information and innovation. Vanemon stated, “With global, regional and cross-functional team coordination and a dedicated Insights Marketing team feeding beauty trends information back to our product development groups, we are organised to be even more responsive and valuable to our regional and global customers.”
After her overview of the new organisational structure, Vanemon moved into discussing another area of evolution for the company: investments. She explained that Croda’s drive towards innovation is fueled by its investments in the future through creating a sustainable chain of resources and improving its facilities, and followed with several examples.
As Vanemon explained, Croda has made substantial investments in sustainability initiatives with the aim of helping its customers reach their sustainability goals:
• The company joined the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) in 2006 and has been steadily working towards its goal of offering only RSPO certified Mass Balance palm oil products by 2017.
• In 2012, Croda acquired proprietary plant stem cell technology that enables the cultivation and amplification of selected cosmetic plant actives in a laboratory setting, thereby conserving land and water resources in addition to offering protection of endangered plants.
• In 2012 and 2013, the company installed solar panels and on the roof of its Innovation Center in New Jersey and in a field at its plant in Delaware. These investments in solar energy fuel a substantial portion of the locations’ activities, effectively decreasing the sites’ annual CO2 emissions by well over a million pounds.
• Also in 2013, Croda further reduced its carbon footprint by completing an innovative renewable energy project at its Delaware facility, using re-claimed gas from a nearby landfill to power more than half of the plant’s operations.
Vanemon stated that the company recently broke ground in Delaware for its most exciting investment to date: the first manufacturing site in North America that will produce 100% sustainable non-ionic surfactants, derived from plant materials. The project is expected to reach completion in 2017.
In addition to the company’s investments in sustainability initiatives, Croda has also made substantial investments in its property sites around the globe, including new, state of the art laboratory facilities in Singapore, South Africa and Brazil. Concluding her presentation, Vanemon shared a preview of an in-progress investment in property at the company’s Innovation Center in New Jersey. The Edison Build-Out project, to be completed later this year, includes dramatic expansion of the site’s formulating and testing laboratories. A tour of the accessible areas of the facility, led by the site’s Research Manager and construction project director, Erik Gunderman, revealed that these laboratory upgrades are anything but cosmetic; the site is undergoing a remarkable change. The added space, once complete, is expected to help the company generate even more claim substantiation data for their products along with additional formulation work. This activity will add immeasurable value for customers, who will have increased access to comprehensive data packages and formulating starting points to initiate and enhance their projects.
The resounding theme for the morning’s presentation was clear: Croda is focused on being an invaluable resource for its customers in crucial aspects of their businesses. As stated by Vanemon, “We always ask ourselves: What is in it for our customer?” With its customers front of mind, Croda continues to build innovation for the future, investing in its people, property and planet.