News
November 2, 2026
What if your favorite chocolate bar suddenly cost twice as much? What if your morning supplement was not available on the shelf due to supply problems? Or what if changes in growing conditions affected a key ingredient, meaning the scent of a beauty product you know and love was no longer quite the same?
These aren't distant possibilities. Climate change is affecting harvests. Natural resources are under pressure. Geopolitical uncertainty is making supply chains less predictable. And pressures on livelihoods are impacting the people and communities behind the products we use every day. Together, these forces are already reshaping how products are sourced, manufactured, and brought to market.
This is where sustainability and business strategy must come together.
Because when you strip away the jargon, sustainability comes down to a straightforward idea: creating value in a way that allows people, the planet and business to thrive, today and in the future.
Therefore, sustainability is about anticipating change, identifying risks and opportunities early, and finding new ways to create value in a more complex world. And often, the most impactful innovations begin with a constraint: a scarce resource, a vulnerable supply chain, impacted livelihoods, or a changing market.
At dsm-firmenich, this mindset is a core part of how we operate. It shapes how our teams, early on, think about future challenges. From rethinking how products are made and where ingredients come from, to using resources more efficiently. This helps us to future-proof our business, to address the sustainability challenges and opportunities of our customers and to create impact at scale, together.
Here are three examples of how our businesses are turning sustainability challenges and evolving market needs into opportunities.
Can you imagine a world without chocolate? Neither can I. But few ingredients illustrate today's challenges more clearly than cocoa.
In 2024, poor harvests and disease affected major cocoa-growing regions, pushing prices to record highs, and highlighting the fragility of a supply chain that many manufacturers depend on.
At dsm-firmenich, we anticipated that climate-related pressures could lead to periods of cocoa scarcity and significant market disruption.
Rather than waiting for the industry to react, we took a proactive approach by bringing together experts from our Science & Research teams and Taste, Texture & Health business unit to deepen our understanding of cocoa
and develop future-ready solutions.
Our ambition was clear: to help our customers continue to deliver the delicious chocolate experiences consumers love while reducing reliance on cocoa. This would mean improving resilience to supply disruptions and price volatility and supporting a lower environmental footprint too. Our answer? That’s: CocoaCraze™.
“Cocoa is never just one flavor. It's dark, nutty, malty, creamy, woody, chocolatey, caramelly, sometimes even vanilla-like. As a flavorist, decoding cocoa and recreating its full sensory richness is already fascinating and remains an exciting challenge.
Today’s most inspiring challenge goes even further: creating delicious cocoa alternatives. It requires the very best of our expertise, combining deep research, a thorough understanding of cocoa's sensory signature, and the creative power of our flavor palette. By carefully selecting and recombining ingredients, we can craft solutions that deliver the delight, authenticity, and indulgence consumers expect while using resources more responsibly. Our CocoaCraze™ concept achieves this and is built to create tailor made solutions.
When upcycled ingredients become part of the solution, the challenge becomes even more rewarding. Turning what could have been side-streams into taste, quality, and pleasure is exactly the kind of innovation that inspires me every day.”
- Brigitte Pellen, Principal Flavorist, Vanilla & Brown Notes
CocoaCraze™ is a family of customized cocoa reduction solutions. By tailoring flavor profiles to match the unique characteristics of cocoa in each application, our flavorists can enable cocoa reductions of up to 50%.
Using less cocoa creates benefits beyond cost too. It helps lower the environmental footprint of products by reducing the land use, water consumption, and greenhouse gas emissions associated with cocoa production. At the same time, it strengthens business resilience by giving manufacturers additional options to navigate cocoa supply shortages, price volatility, and long-term climate-related risks.
Because let’s face it: we don’t want to live in a world without chocolate. As climate change increasingly threatens cocoa production, our scientists and flavorists found a way to save resources and use less cocoa, while protecting what so many of us like most: a lovely chocolate experience.
Every few years, something terrible happens in the oceans: El Niño strikes. It’s a recurring climate pattern that causes ocean waters to become unusually warm, of which the results are disastrous for marine life and fish. For the remainder of 2026 and into 2027, weather forecasts are predicting a ‘historic impact’ on the oceans and fish populations.1
Among the many consequences, El Niño puts huge pressure on the production of an important nutrient we all need: omega-3.
Did someone ever tell you omega-3 is good for you? Well, they were right. Omega-3 fatty acids are essential nutrients that support heart, brain, and eye health throughout life. There is one issue with omega-3 though: our body doesn’t produce it. In fact, 76% of the global population does not meet recommended intakes of EPA and DHA, the two important fatty acids in omega-32. So we need to supplement our food with these fatty acids.
Traditionally, omega-3 is sourced from fish. But here’s a surprising fact: fish get their omega-3 from what they eat, and that all starts with the microalgae they eat.
So, if fish get their omega-3 from algae, why don’t we go straight to the source too?
It’s an idea that’s been decades in the making. In the 1980s, NASA researchers were already exploring what algae could offer future space missions, from producing oxygen to providing nutrition3. They weren’t necessarily looking for a new source of omega-3, but their work helped demonstrate the potential of algae as a way of producing valuable nutrients.
Fast forward several decades, and that potential has become a reality. Scientists can now cultivate specific algae strains in controlled fermentation systems: these microorganisms are grown in tanks, where conditions like temperature, nutrients, and oxygen can be carefully managed to help them produce the oils we need.
The result is a different way of producing EPA and DHA: grow the algae directly, then extract the omega-3 oils they naturally produce. That means we don't need to rely on fish to be the middle-men.
That’s the thinking behind life’s®OMEGA, the first and only commercially available microalgal omega-3 for dietary supplements from our Health, Nutrition & Care business unit.
Going directly to the source helps us diversify how we produce an important nutrient, while reducing reliance on marine resources and the pressure that comes with sourcing from the ocean.
Sometimes the biggest opportunities come from cutting the middle-man, or in this case, ‘the middle-fish’.
Mint may seem like an ‘everyday’ ingredient. But from the toothpaste we use in the morning to the fragrances we wear and the food and beauty products we enjoy throughout the day, mint plays a surprisingly important role in consumer products. Yet behind this everyday feeling of freshness lies a growing challenge.
India is one of the world’s largest mint-growing regions and a critical source of the natural mint oil used in products around the world, from fragrances and beauty products to oral care. In fact, 85% of the world’s mint in oral care and confectionary products is produced in India and it’s an important ingredient used across our Perfumery & Beauty business unit.
But the future of that supply is under strain. Mint growers in the region are increasingly suffering from climate variability, water scarcity, disease pressure, and economic uncertainty.
For farmers, that can mean less predictable yields. For businesses that rely on mint, it can mean a less dependable supply of an ingredient they need.
So resilience has to start in the field.
Through the Mint with Purpose program, we work with Norex, our local partner, and farming communities to tackle some of these challenges. Farmers receive training in practices that can improve soil health, use water more efficiently, and increase yields, while the program also strengthens local distillation capabilities and creates opportunities for entrepreneurship, including for women and young adults.
“Within a year of joining Mint with Purpose, I harvested 51 kg of mint oil, earning a net profit of INR 48,800 per acre. Mint with Purpose also supported me in accessing Sukanya Samriddhi Yojana [a government savings scheme that helps parents save for their daughters’ future] — giving me peace of mind about my daughters’ future education.”
— Puja, 30, farmer from Tomda, Uttar Pradesh, India“Thanks to Mint with Purpose, my oil yield increased by nearly 39%. I never imagined such earnings from mint. GALS [Gender Action Learning System] training changed my family dynamics — I now make financial decisions jointly with my husband. Selling surplus from my vegetable garden earned me an additional INR 10,500.”
—Sarwati, 42, farmer and GALS graduate from Nawabpura, Uttar Pradesh, India
We know how important mint is to consumers. It isn't just an ingredient; it's bringing the essence of freshness to our products. Through our programs, we aim to protect the future of that freshness.
Cocoa reduction, algae-based omega-3, and sustainable mint farming practices in India may seem like very different stories. But they all start with the same question: how can we turn the challenges of a rapidly changing world into opportunities?
For me, that’s what sustainability delivering business value is really about. It’s not about predicting exactly what the future will look like, but about understanding where change is heading, anticipating what it could mean for people, the planet, our businesses and the markets we serve, and using those insights to find better ways forward. Sometimes, they are small steps, sometimes, big leaps.
The pressures facing our supply chains and communities, and the growing constraints on natural resources are not going away (if anything, they will become more complex), but neither is our ability to innovate and adapt.
That is where we at dsm-firmenich see the opportunity: sustainability can be a catalyst for better ideas, stronger businesses, and more resilient value chains. It gives us a reason to question what we make, how we make it, and where it comes from, and in doing so, find new ways to create value for people, the planet and our customers.
Learn more about sustainability at dsm-firmenich, here.