The year 2023 was marked by the delivery of excellent performance and encouraging progress on Givaudan’s 2025 ambitions, validating the company’s strategic path. Givaudan says the results show that the company has managed to support customer growth, while also leveraging innovation capabilities to introduce new solutions. This further strengthens a market leadership position in chosen markets.
Givaudan
Geneva, Switzerland
2023 Sales: CHF 6.9 billion
With the completion of the third year of the five-year strategy cycle ‘Committed to Growth, with Purpose’, Givaudan delivered solid topline growth on a like-for-like basis, strongly supported by pricing actions that fully compensated for increases in input costs and broader inflationary effects. Free cash flow achieved record levels thanks to improved profitability, the contribution from a performance improvement plan and reduction of inventories.
With ongoing geopolitical instabilities and a macroeconomic environment of inflationary pressures and rising interest rates, the external environment remained challenging in 2023. The industry has also gone through a period of significant change, facing material destocking and shrinkflation in all major parts of the business. Remaining focused on the core strategy of growing with customers through customized, high-value-added solutions has nonetheless allowed the company to thrive in this dynamic market environment.
The industry leader’s 2025 strategy is built on shaping the future of food, fragrances, and beauty by affirming its position as the most sought-after innovation and co-creation partner for its customers. Health and wellbeing, naturals and plant-based proteins—the broader global macro themes and trends that motivate the strategy—continue to drive the business and offer opportunities for more profitable growth. Customers remain at the heart of the strategy.
At the end of 2023, Givaudan had:
- Over 16,200 employees
- 163 locations in 51 countries
- 64 creation and research centers
At the end of 2023, Givaudan had:
- A procurement spend of CHF 3.7 billion
- 2,700 raw material suppliers in more than 100 countries
- 14,400 additional global partners supplying indirect materials and services
Business Accomplishments
Introducing to the market a number of exciting new innovations, detailed below, helped the company address the industry’s changing landscape by allowing customers to differentiate their brands with consumers through customized, high-value-added solutions. Partnerships have strengthened the company’s biotechnology capabilities, contributing to the sustainability journey and helping meet customers' goals. Enhanced offerings in digital technology helped Givaudan further explore the value that it adds to its business, particularly the role it can play in aiding the creation process. This, in turn, helps the company reach new customers and respond rapidly.
Gilles Andrier, CEO, Givaudancourtesy of Givaudan
"The third year of Givaudan’s strategy cycle featured strong financial performance, despite the challenging environment," CEO Gilles Andrier says. He cited the company’s clearly defined strategic positioning and proactive steps taken to adapt to the broader environment in explaining the company’s industry-leading results.
“In supporting the growth of our customers, we demonstrated our strong focus on execution,” he said. “We also leveraged our innovation capabilities to introduce new solutions, which further strengthened our market leadership position in our chosen markets.”
At the end of the first quarter of 2024, Andrier said that the company had had a very good start to the year, driven by strong momentum in the established business and a high level of new wins. Strong growth was achieved across all markets and segments demonstrating Givaudan’s unique position in supporting the growth of its customers around the world.
“We are well on course in all areas of our 2025 strategy and remain focused on supporting the growth of our customers with innovative and differentiating solutions,” Andrier said.
Sales Performance
Though the operating environment was challenging in some key markets and segments, Givaudan sustained good business momentum whilst maintaining its project pipeline, operations and global supply chain at a high level in 2023. Full-year group sales were CHF 6,915 million, an increase of 4.1% on a like-for-like (LFL) basis and a decrease of 2.8% in Swiss francs when compared to 2022. Good growth was achieved across product segments and geographies, with the high-growth markets growing at 10.0% on an LFL basis and the mature markets declining by 0.6% LFL. The Company implemented price increases to fully compensate for the increases in input costs in 2023.
The company further demonstrated strength in the first quarter of 2024, with a recorded sales increase of 12.6% on an LFL basis and an increase of 2.8% in Swiss francs. Strong business momentum and a healthy project pipeline showed that it can maintain operations and global supply chain at a high level in the face of increased volume demand from customers and some continuing supply chain challenges.
Sustainability: Good Progress on Non-financial Targets
The company also made good progress on its non-financial targets, which are aligned with Givaudan's purpose of ‘creating happier, healthier lives with love for nature’ and integrated into the 2025 strategy. Givaudan has made specific commitments to becoming climate-positive, increasing diversity, and protecting both the people and the environment in its supply chains and says having clear, measurable targets is an important part of demonstrating their contribution to growing the business in a sustainable way. In 2023, the company was able to accelerate progress towards its longer-term ambitions in these areas.
Givaudan secured its fifth consecutive CDP double A on climate action and water security. This latest recognition makes Givaudan one of a small number of companies that achieved a double ‘A’ out of more than 21,000 organizations scored and also reinforced its global leadership in corporate transparency and environmental action. For the first time, Givaudan reported on forests as part of its CDP disclosure, securing an A– signaling strong progress on its efforts to address deforestation. The CDP forests questionnaire focuses on how organizations produce, source, and use four key forest risk commodities: timber, cattle products, soy, and palm oil.
The company was also recognized at this year's RE100 awards, receiving the ‘Enterprising Leader’ award for its renewable electricity journey. They are very close to achieving their goal of 100% renewable electricity by 2025: 94% had already been reached by the end of 2023.
“As we celebrate these achievements it is important to recognize that we must not stop here,” Andrier said. “There remains much work to do and we must continue to accelerate action across all these vital topics.”
Louie D’Amico, president, Taste & Wellbeingcourtesy of Givaudan
Louie D’Amico, president of Taste & Wellbeing (T&W), says that during the past 12 months, the business has strengthened its position as the co-creation partner of choice for customers, with the company collaborating to develop food experiences that do good and feel good, for body, mind and planet. “Our organization around these food experiences spaces and co-creation process continue to be key components of our approach, allowing us to better address the evolving needs of both customers and consumers in a challenging business environment,” D’Amico said.
Business Accomplishments
With this ambition in mind, last year’s highlights included implementing an even stronger co-creation culture, leveraging and expanding digital tools and programs, and opening new locations around the world.
The company’s co-creation process is tailored to the needs of each customer and project, adding greater value than either Givaudan or the customer could achieve alone. Co-creation projects carried out over the past 12 months consistently produced product launches that far exceeded expectations.
As a key part of Givaudan’s co-creation offering, last year saw a strong focus on integrating and expanding digital tools and programs, allowing customers to benefit from important insights upon which they can build tomorrow’s food experiences. The company launched a new iteration of the FlavourVision® program, this time powered by leading consumer insight agency Canvas8. Leveraging global research, expansive data and world-renowned expertise, Givaudan identified five consumer trends that can help customers turn market disruption into opportunities in line with consumer desires.
Last year also marked the launch of the Customer Foresight futurescaping platform. The platform leverages Givaudan's human expertise, big data and AI to anticipate tomorrow's challenges, foresee consumer expectations, and create winning food experiences. Projects have confirmed the platform's utility as a co-creation tool whose potential is poised to grow as it learns through AI, allowing it to anticipate what’s next a decade from now – or beyond.
Finally, no co-creation process is complete without the right facilities to share and explore new possibilities. In 2023, Givaudan opened the Tropical Food Innovation Lab in Brazil, in partnership with Bühler, Cargill, ITAL and the FoodTech Hub Latam. This innovation ecosystem fosters the development of sustainable food and beverages along with accessible and safe nutrition with a focus on Brazilian biodiversity. Addressing plant-based innovation, Givaudan launched The Food Experience Lab for Taste and Colour at Nurasa in Singapore to enable local food tech start-ups to develop regional plant-based creations and also expanded the Protein Hub at their Zurich Innovation Centre in Kemptthal, Switzerland to support the growth of dairy alternatives. Finally, to accommodate growing needs in the Middle East, they opened a new Innovation Hub in Dubai designed to accelerate regional innovation and co-creation.
Together, these initiatives and facilities allow Givaudan to add value throughout the co-creation process, ensuring market-winning products that offer the enticing food experiences consumers seek.
Influencers for Innovation
D’Amico said he sees three main influences currently driving innovation. The first is a significant downturn in venture capital investment in food tech. This means food and beverage companies are now looking for well-established partners to provide innovative solutions and help them deliver new products and experiences to their customers.
“This is exactly why Givaudan’s co-creation approach has become increasingly important to our customers,” D’Amico said. “As companies turn to us for innovation, we’re turning up the dial on game-changing tools, programs and facilities designed to foster collaboration, provide insight into the consumer experience and anticipate trends and foresight well into the future.”
The second influence, D’Amico says, is an unwavering focus on sustainability: from raw material selection to consumer purchasing behavior, sustainability has become a key factor that guides decision-making throughout the value chain. In line with the company’s purpose and as part of its commitment to food systems transformation, Givaudan Taste & Wellbeing is enabling the shift to more planet-friendly diets, helping consumers achieve their well-being goals, offering more nutritious food choices, and driving responsible value chains.
The third key influence is the importance of nutrition. From news articles and warnings from health organizations to regulatory demands and consumer scrutiny, the food industry is under pressure to start delivering greater and better nutrition to food without compromising taste. Givaudan is creating relevant solutions for all product types and consumer needs, including comprehensive flavor solutions for addressing sugar reduction needs while maintaining great taste, flavor, color, texture and masking solutions for successful plant-based products, and branded botanical ingredients that deliver scientifically backed health benefits.
Looking Ahead to 2025
D’Amico says that the industry is now facing a fast-changing and fragile global environment and that amidst all these challenges, the company remains committed to driving innovation and ensuring that customers have exactly what they need, when they need it. Givaudan does this by closely monitoring the market and adapting strategies accordingly. Their focus on digital transformation will continue to help the company in the year ahead, as will a focus on proactively supporting customers when it comes to regulations and new legislation.
With regulators worldwide introducing new legislation to keep pace with innovation, harmonization is one of the most important considerations for industry success. Frequent changes in the regulatory landscape have an ever-increasing impact on customers' products and Givaudan’s dedicated teams of scientists, toxicologists, and specialists in regulatory affairs proactively monitor these shifts in all geographical regions where they do business.
Through advocacy activities with the International Organization of the Flavor Industry (IOFI) and other industry associations, Givaudan stays informed about new or upcoming changes in legislation as early as possible. This allows the company to assess the impact on our existing portfolio and products in development. By staying ahead of regulatory changes, Givaudan can ensure compliance, minimize the impact on existing products, and enable the company and its customers to grow and protect markets globally.
“By actively participating in these industry organizations and working groups, we have the opportunity to shape regulations and standards that impact our industry,” D’Amico said. “This proactive approach not only ensures regulatory compliance but also allows us to provide valuable guidance to our customers and contribute to the overall development and growth of the industry.”
Maurizio Volpi, president, Fragrance & Beautycourtesy of Givaudan
Maurizio Volpi is positive about the outlook for fragrance and beauty overall, despite continuing challenges from the macro environment. The company’s strengths lie in innovations that address customer needs and consumer trends, and a perfumer’s palette that features the best, safest and most sustainable molecule innovation.
“We describe our fragrance and beauty business with the words passion, expertise, and flair,” Volpi said. “The artistry of our perfumers addresses a myriad of scented stories for brands everywhere. Our collections of beauty innovations push industry limits by inspiring and empowering customers with tailored products that enhance their wellbeing.”
Business Accomplishments
Excellent performance of Fine Fragrances drove this year’s good growth, Volpi said, as did an acceleration in growth of volume in the Consumer Products business.
In 2023, the company introduced a number of innovative products that address a wide range of customer needs. Rosablooma, for instance, is a biodegradable molecule that meets the demand for a sustainable floral rosy ingredient with outstanding diffusion and bloom. Five times more performant than citronellol, it follows green chemistry principles and shows outstanding carbon efficiency. Geogaiab brings green, earthy and watery tonalities to fragrance in a 100% biodegradable formula while Gravitylc, an enriched extract of Gigartina Stellata and produced according to an exclusive multi-step and eco-friendly process, is able to relaunch key processes linked to the extracellular matrix and elastic fiber protection and reorganize fibers in the dermis. ScalpSured, a new addition to Givaudan’s Zap portfolio, allows for the creation of fragrances that effectively counteract the multifactorial issue of scalp malodor, a concern that can be exacerbated by air pollution, stress and head coverings. PrimalHyale Hydra[+] is a new cationic hyaluronic acid (HA) crafted by white biotechnology. It outperforms standard HA hydration benefits by at least a factor of two, bringing instant and long-lasting moisturizing efficacy to rinse-off and leave-on applications.
Givaudan also took a significant step in advancing customer-centered digital solutions with Myrissif, an innovative approach that uses AI to translate scents into color patterns. This technology strengthens the company’s ability to capture and predict consumers' spontaneous emotional responses to fragrances, aligning colors, emotions, and scents effectively. The Myrissi algorithm, developed over a decade of academic research in brain imagery and AI, combined with Givaudan's 35 years of neuroscience expertise, deepens understanding of consumers' emotional mechanisms. Modeled on a database of more than 25,000 consumer tests, Myrissi decodes the spontaneous olfactory connection with color, allowing Givaudan to start the creative and product development process based on either a chemical composition to predict the color code association or a chromatic base to determine the appropriately associated scent. It also generates visual mood boards and verbal ecosystems for any fragrance, supporting customers in maximizing the emotional impact of their olfactive creation, from packaging to campaign storytelling.
Givaudan’s perfumers worked to deliver a fragranced interpretation of love and seduction, as understood by Gen Z. Building on expertise in decoding the ongoing and future needs of consumers, the creative vision ‘What is love?’ is an olfactive exploration of Gen Z's love codes – unfiltered, unstaged and inclusive. It brings to life Gen Z's take on love and seduction as a result of extensive research, driven by consumer insights and monitoring of social media. This ensures the most accurate and nuanced olfactive expression of these new love codes, which prioritize inclusivity and unbridled emotion. Perfumers can now translate Gen Z's search for authenticity and caring love into never-before-smelled fragrance compositions. Such exploration in areas of potential high growth drives innovation, Volpi said.
Innovation with Care for Nature and Communities
As part of the creative process, Givaudan conducts detailed consumer research in every corner of the globe, helping perfumers understand what people love and enabling them to provide pleasure with each scent they create. Extensive grassroots work and sharing unique insights, all while seeking optimal ways to stay on top of scientific progress, and identify imminent market shifts and product development trends.
“We are constantly looking out for emerging trends or new areas to explore, innovating and often drawing inspiration from our many artistic and cultural partnerships,” Volpi said. “All brands need to know what’s coming next to ensure their products resonate with consumers.“
Tailored strategies for tapping into mature market opportunities and strategies for increasing care for Nature and Communities complete the approach to innovation in the company’s Fragrance & Beauty business. While Givaudan’s ingredients palette for fragrance mixtures is now over 85% biodegradable by volume, the company aims to reduce its impact even more by bringing additional biodegradable materials to market over time, ultimately reaching a goal of 100%. The same is true of renewable ingredients: the company wants to use renewable resources to produce all of its materials.
“When looking at the way we create, we build on a basis of sustainability with a synergistic combination of creativity and science,” Volpi said. “We stay abreast of rapidly evolving consumer preferences and industry trends, and our scientific expertise allows us to push limits and establish Givaudan as a leader in the fragrance industry.”
Focus Over the Next 12 Months
Looking ahead, the company is watchful of changes in the regulatory landscape that can have an impact on customers' products. Givaudan Fragrance & Beauty monitors such legislation in all geographical regions where it does business and actively engages in advocacy to learn about new or upcoming changes in legislation as early as possible. This allows the company to assess the impact on the existing portfolio but also to examine products in development, helping them to remain in compliance and minimize the impact on existing products.
A significant part of this commitment involves continued investment in the Environmental Laboratory, helping Givaudan lead advances in biodegradability testing within the sector. With almost three decades of testing experience, the Givaudan laboratory has extensive capabilities for both biodegradability and physico-chemical testing to Good Laboratory Practice (GLP) standards. This certification allows the team to conduct studies that are recognized by the OECD and essential for the worldwide registration of new molecules. The number of tests rose to more than 1200 by the end of 2023 from just 40 in 2016. The lab has supported the development of both PlanetCapsg, the first biodegradable polymer for use in encapsulated fragrances able to meet stringent European Commission macroplastics safety regulations, and the biodegradable molecule Rosabloom.
“In a world increasingly focused on sustainability, our expertise in providing proven safe and sustainable ingredients not only positions Givaudan as a competitive force but also fosters confidence and trust among customers and consumers alike,” Volpi said.
Footnotes
aRosabloom is a trademark of Givaduan
bGeogaia
cGravityl
dScalpSure
ePrimalHyal
fMyrissi
gPlanetCaps
