A dsm-firmenich responsible sourcing story
In southeastern Madagascar, we source the highest quality pink pepper for our fragrances. Pink pepper’s ingredients enhance perfumes by adding depth, texture and volume, while its essential oil offers a spicy, citrusy profile with sparkling, slightly woody facets.
The sustainable development of the supply chain plays a critical role in delivering quality products to our customers.
In Madagascar, pink pepper trees are cultivated by smallholder farmers and harvested from May to July. The pepper is sorted into grades, either for food or for essential oil extraction, with both processes relying heavily on manual labor.
Creating value for all our stakeholders
To create value for our customers and maximize positive impacts for both People and Planet, we actively engage our suppliers on a sustainability journey. This ensures that we operate within the most ethical, traceable, and sustainable value chains. We also align our efforts with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) #1 End Poverty, #8 Decent Work, #12 Responsible Production and Consumption.
By engaging smallholder farmers in the cultivation and manual harvesting of pink pepper, we create economic opportunities that help alleviate poverty (SDG 1). Our initiatives to improve wages, diversify income sources, and support Fair for Life certification ensure decent work conditions and foster economic growth (SDG 8). Additionally, our commitment to ethical, traceable, and sustainable value chains aligns with responsible consumption and production goals (SDG 12).
Our responsible sourcing actions at source leverage long-term commercial relationships and sustainability expertise to deploy initiatives that empower our suppliers in the field and strive to make a positive impact on upstream stakeholders while future-proofing our supply chain. Nevertheless, we know that local communities face a range of social challenges, including limited access to social protection and fair wages. In 2022, we identified social challenges for local communities in Madagascar through a comprehensive supply chain assessment and a detailed survey of smallholder farmers and workers across six sourcing areas, leveraging the good practices established in our supply chain due diligence framework. We committed to collaborating with local partners to improve livelihoods for farmers and communities in line with our Responsible Sourcing standard. Our plan combined immediate actions with capacity-building efforts to establish sustainability practices and long-term impacts. Using precise local data, we designed a targeted social impact strategy.
1) Improving wages and income
In 2023 and 2024, we assessed the gap between minimum and living wages and piloted measures to build a progressive improvement strategy based on findings from a study using the Anker methodology. These included:
- Raising farm gate prices
- Diversifying income sources
- Supporting Fair for Life certification to empower local farmers and workers
2) Strengthening worker protection
We collaborated with suppliers to transition some seasonal workers to annual contracts and introduced enhanced human resource management and health and safety systems. Permanent staff were trained in human rights, fostering a safer, more inclusive work environment.
3) Promoting inclusive governance
We worked with cooperatives and smallholders to strengthen their governance systems, enabling collective decision-making regarding the use of Fair for Life funds. This approach further empowered local communities to take ownership of their development.
Two years of collaboration delivered strong and measurable benefits. Our progress includes a 95% achievement rate on project objectives, with tangible improvements in human rights awareness, wage increases, and worker protection. We also saw increased engagement and participation of cooperatives in shaping their own sustainable future.
Finally, our work in the pink pepper supply chain demonstrates the power of collaboration to deliver sustainable value, even in challenging contexts. With renewed objectives for 2025 and beyond, we aim to build on these successes and explore new opportunities for sustainable transformation.
I’m pleased that our collaboration with the responsible sourcing team and suppliers in natural supply chains has strong positive impacts on climate, nature, and people, as seen in the Madagascar pink pepper value chain. Suppliers committed to sustainability will be more resilient and successful in the future. This effort requires shared commitment across the value chain for sustainable impact.
