Creating a better world together

At Corbion, sustainability is all about aligning our business to meet the defining societal needs of our time, from food security to resource depletion to population growth. Sustainability is at the heart of what we do - and we demonstrate it every day across our entire value chain.

The foundation of our updated sustainability strategy is the materiality matrix, which we use to set priorities and ensure that we take a focused approach. A materiality analysis is about the identification of key issues that are important to our stakeholders and our strategy. The materiality matrix visualizes the results of this analysis, by plotting the relevant social, environmental, governance, and economic issues as a function of their importance to stakeholders (vertical axis) and Corbion's strategy (horizontal axis).

The image below shows the upper-right section of Corbion's materiality matrix, highlighting the nine material themes.

Materiality matrix

Combined with our internal assessment of the importance of the issues to our strategy and the impact of Corbion’s activities on the issue, this resulted in the identification of nine material themes. These nine themes have a high impact on our strategy and are considered important by the majority of our stakeholders.

Sustainability framework

Based on these material themes we have updated our sustainability framework, including our key initiatives, ambitions, and targets. Our updated sustainability framework highlights that Corbion creates solutions to improve the lives of people and reduce the impact on our planet, and that we do this in a responsible way.

We aligned our strategy to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and aim to maximize our contribution to Zero hunger (SDG2) and Responsible production and consumption (SDG12). SDG2 or Zero hunger is about food security, improved nutrition, and sustainable agriculture. SDG12 or Responsible production and consumption is about the circular economy and also includes food waste reduction as sub-target.

Sustainability is about the long-term health of the business and requires long-term thinking. To drive change, breakthrough innovation is required and this can be stimulated by defining visionary goals. We have therefore added 2030 targets to drive this change and improve our positioning as sustainability leader.

Our sustainability framework outlines our sustainability priorities and ambitions. It covers the most important material aspects that are relevant within our value chain. Our key sustainability initiatives are responsible sourcing, responsible operations, and sustainable solutions.

Our responsible sourcing initiative aims to create a sustainable supply chain for our agricultural raw materials, taking into account social, environmental, and governance practices of our suppliers.

Our responsible operations ambition is focused around creating zero incidents and zero waste. Corbion aims to create a safe and healthy workspace with the goal of having zero incidents because we believe no job is so important that it cannot be done safely and without adverse environmental impact. Our zero waste ambition relates to the efficient use of raw materials at our own operation, as well as energy and water, to minimize wastage and maximize the value obtained from these resources.

Our sustainable solutions enable our customers to reduce their environmental footprint and support the transition to a more circular economy as a society. We asses these solutions, in order to credibly demonstrate their positive impact on people and planet.

Critical enablers
Innovation, transparency, and stakeholder engagement are critical enablers ensuring that we make visible progress on our key initiatives and that these initiatives continue to be aligned with stakeholder expectations. Last but not least, engaged employees are essential to make it happen.

For our key initiatives, we have formulated ambitions and identified success factors that are critical to realizing them. We measure our progress through several KPIs and have defined 2020 and 2030 targets for each initiative.