Addressing Sustainability and Compliance Challenges

1. How do you perceive the ongoing evolution of the food industry and its potential impact on addressing challenges in meeting your business requirements?

The food industry faces a unique set of challenges regarding agriculture and commodities in general. Areas once rich in resources like water and fertile soil have been depleted as climate change continues to affect countries worldwide. We at Symrise are taking the necessary steps to develop risk analysis platforms to track what we will face for our core commodity products in 5, 10, and 20 years from now. We look to digitalization and AI resources to assist farms that we source from and how we can partner with them to lower potential sourcing risks. Understanding what we are facing from a global perspective allows our teams to pull resources from a wide variety of backgrounds and share that knowledge across all our locations around the globe. 

2. If your company can give consent for this, can you share your experiences from any specific initiatives or projects aimed at reducing the environmental impact that you were recently involved in?

We are strongly committed to sustainability at Symrise and keep it at the forefront of our daily lives. Recently, in North America, we celebrated several initiatives surrounding sustainable practices at the office and home and organized trash clean-ups in several states, collecting over 800 pounds of garbage from the streets of the communities in which we work. We took place in zero waste week in which we were encouraged to refrain from any disposable packaging, one-time plastic or paper goods use, and to purchase locally vs. having products shipped as this creates a substantial amount of material that ends up in landfills. The company organizes a car-free day each year during which employees are asked to find alternative methods to get to work when and where available. It could be using public transportation, riding your bike, or car-pooling to minimize the amount of carbon emissions going into the ozone. We look to upcycle as much as possible and valorize our waste streams because of our production. At our Silverton, Oregon facility, we process 800+ acres of fresh corn during the summer months and sell the silage waste stream back to local farmers to use for animal feed. I feel proud to work for a company that considers the health of the planet and actively strives to protect it.

Building relationships with your suppliers and farmers is crucial to success

3. What are some of the challenges in your business that current services are unable to provide an optimal solution?

Global regulatory compliance is a challenge that I often face in procurement, for which I do not yet have an optimal solution. Each growing region faces its own obstacles when it comes to pests, weather, and water scarcity, and that will require the usage of herbicides, pesticides, and fungicides on the crops, and the list of permitted chemicals is an ever-changing landscape. We strive to source as locally as possible, support businesses within our community, and maintain lower transportation costs, but this creates a challenge to remain compliant globally because the chemicals permitted in the United States may not be allowed into Europe or the Asian-Pacific markets. In our Silverton, Oregon facility, we partner with the farms we work with, allowing us to have a say in the process and the opportunity to be better stewards of the land. We want to work with farms and companies that share our values regarding sustainability and responsibility while also saving money and meeting the global requirements of the different regions in which we sell. This can be difficult and rewarding at the same time. There will always be a challenging purchasing component when it comes to controlling the input costs. With the rate of inflation that we saw here in North America, we had to learn to pivot and find savings wherever possible. 

4. What advice would you offer to professionals in a similar role within the food industry based on your experience?

I have been quite fortunate in my 13-year food career with Diana Food/Symrise and have had an opportunity to explore several departments over the years. Last October, I seized an opportunity in our procurement department to immerse myself in a new side of the business, just as the post-pandemic craze was starting to stabilize, and I haven’t looked back. I’ve learned in procurement that you must stay agile and network as much as possible. Building relationships with your suppliers and farmers is crucial to success. There will be situations where you need material yesterday, and having a strong connection with your suppliers opens those doors for them to move mountains. I strongly encourage face-to-face meetings with suppliers whenever possible, as putting a face with a name allows for a more personable experience. It’s important to take the challenges as they come, learn from mistakes, and always look to the future.