People. Planet. Progress: our Sustainability program

Our Sustainability program starts with our company purpose of bringing progress to life, identifies eight key focus areas, sets a series of time-bound and quantifiable targets for each, and then translates achieving them into a series of actions for our Business Units

Our program¹ aims to deliver:

• Sustainable performance: Our sustainability work is designed to reduce risks and increase resilience. It helps future-proof our business and position us as the employer, supplier, and investment of choice.

• Value for customers: By offering sustainable solutions focused on areas based on materiality and commercial relevance, we drive progress with and for our customers.

• Impact at scale: We have the size, reach, and innovation capability to drive positive impact at scale. As our business grows, our positive societal impact grows too.

Our nature target

Our program originally included a target on nature positive projects, which was set to be announced in late 2025. Our nature development project informed us this was already addressed through a combination of existing targets and new ambitions. As such, the target has been removed from this program overview. See Biodiversity and ecosystems in Environmental information for more information.

The UN Sustainable Development Goals

We contribute to many of the SDGs, but in particular to SDGs 2 and 3 through the products and solutions we provide, and to SDG 12 in how we run our business.

How our focus areas are helping us to deliver for People and Planet

Promote human rights and needs

To truly thrive, people need social fulfilment. At dsm-firmenich, that means starting with the fundamentals: ensuring respect for human rights across our operations and supply chains. Through more responsible business practices, we will not only uphold the highest standards of human rights but also help improve living standards across our value chain.

We believe that this all begins with paying our own employees a living wage and ensuring there is no gender pay gap. We then hope to empower all of our people to thrive by fostering a safer working environment and promoting inclusion and belonging in our workplaces.

Fuel healthy lives

Whether it’s individual well-being or societal prosperity, helping people to live healthier lives requires a strong foundation. Through our world-leading science and research capabilities, we develop solutions to some of the most pressing nutrition and dietary problems. We know prevention is better than the cure and work on everything from addressing the micronutrient gap to transforming diets and closing the health longevity gap. No matter how essential our solutions are, however, we cannot make a positive impact unless our solutions reach those who need them. To this end, we always look to forge new partnerships with government agencies, NGOs, and the private sector.

Nurture wellbeing

It is often the little things that make the biggest difference. It could be a mouthwatering meal boosting people’s mood, or an emotion-evoking scent, but the way people feel matters just as much as any scientific definition of ‘health.’ Thanks to our world-class capabilities in fragrance, taste, and texture, we can create unforgettable sensory experiences with a positive impact on well-being, personal growth, and development. We practice what we preach by nurturing the well-being of our employees, fostering a culture of mutual value, and using our Global Vitality Office to encourage more informed choices for a healthy lifestyle.

Foster a responsible supply chain

We are driving progress across our value chains by joining forces with suppliers to create sustainable value for all. We embed sustainability into our procurement and purchasing decision-making processes from the start. This includes setting minimum requirements for our suppliers and monitoring their sustainability performance, which in turn allows us to assess risk levels, address specific customer requests, and respond to key supply chain challenges. We also engage with our procurement managers worldwide, invest in upskilling initiatives to maximize their knowledge of sustainable sourcing best practices, and take part in industry coalitions to drive impact at scale.

Design sustainable products

In the modern era, designing sustainable products is a process that has to combine creativity, innovation, robust data, and AI tools. For us, sustainable product development is not about trial-and-error but about employing a structured design approach and leveraging cutting-edge techniques to create products that meet the very highest standards. We use Safe and Sustainable by Design (SSbD) principles to assess our impact, apply ‘end-in-mind’ thinking to ensure that sustainability is considered from the start, then apply design-build-test-learn cycles through our Science & Research centers.

Accelerate climate action

Climate change is the defining challenge of our time. At dsm-firmenich, we are determined to play our part in tackling it within our business, value chain, and beyond. We are making significant investments in reducing our emissions and have set ambitious, integrated climate targets – validated by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) in 2024 – in line with the latest climate science for keeping global warming to no more than 1.5°C. Thanks to our advanced Science & Research capabilities, we are also supporting our customers with their own climate journeys by providing innovative products and tools that create impact at scale and bring progress to life.

Safeguard nature and biodiversity

Everything on the planet depends on nature. As a leading innovator in health, nutrition, and beauty, we are reliant on the biodiversity that underpins our sensory products and bio-based solutions, both for the inputs and ingredients we use and produce, and for the inspiration behind our creations. We are on a mission to safeguard nature – for example water, biodiversity and forests – in our high-risk value chains, working with our suppliers and partners to find more sustainable solutions.

Conserving our planet’s resources

Taking only what we need and putting back what we can: that’s our philosophy when it comes to resource conservation. This is critical, as everything we need to thrive, from food and water to air and shelter, relies on our planet’s resources. To conserve these for future generations, we are taking actions that boost productivity, eliminate waste, and prevent contamination. Over the years, we have invested in water re-use, thereby reducing the amount of water we withdraw at our sites. Through initiatives like these, and by optimizing our site operations and collaborating across the value chain, we commit to using only what we need.

Our 2030 targets – measurable, transparent, and timebound

As part of our Sustainability program, we have set clear, ambitious, and science‑based targets that are to be achieved by 2030.

In 2025, we made good progress. We met our target of paying a living wage to all employees, as well as our Inclusion and Employee Engagement targets. We made progress on our targets on micronutrient gap and responsible sourcing of key natural ingredients, as well as our climate targets. Our climate targets are SBTi-validated, and we aim to be net-zero by 2045.