5th Pillar

Customers and Market, Product Impact

We actively engage our customers to ensure that all of our products promote the health and well-being of people and preserve our planet. We do this by encouraging our business partners to support our goals throughout the complete life cycle of their products.

With that commitment the company aims at causing no negative impact on customers’ products whole sustainability life cycle, share common vision with them, deliver socially responsible products and services and keep informed customers.

Customer relationship

Givaudan has close partnership with customers. The company seeks to understand their strategies and how they interact with their consumers – customer intimacy culture. The aim is to provide best solutions to meet customer´s needs, and, if possible, to be pro-active. A good example is the manufacturing of optimized batches, planed and implemented in partnership with one of its customers, in order to meet sustainability requirements.

In 2009 and 2010, Givaudan was invited by a customer to act as counselor for the SRG – Sustainability Reference Group formed by numerous companies with a view to raise issues about the role of companies in the future and the development of innovative sustainability projects.

That engagement in sustainability actions has enabled the company to have excellence in product supply.

Quality assurance program

100% of the Fragrances Division products are checked during development phase to make sure they follow the IFRA- International Fragrance Association regulations, an association in charge of setting global quality standards, and ensuring that companies fully follow all legal requirements. The products are manufactured in accordance with the Current Good Manufacturing Practices and filtered in the end of the process, before bottling and, in turn, reducing the possibility to have dirty components.

In the Flavours Division they follow Anvisa (Brazilian Regulatory Agency) regulations since the raw material is part of the human consumption products formulas and might present contaminated material harmful to health. The Best Practices guidelines are also applied and followed in flavours production.

All the products both from the Fragrance Division and the Flavour Division are labeled in accordance with the IFRA and Anvisa regulations and carry content, quality and identification number descriptions and further information that allow the company to track a specific batch.

In 2010, any disruptive cases were reported regarding regulations and codes of product information and labeling.

Any alteration of IFRA regulations and Anvisa recommendations, for instance, the restriction of some ingredients, is automatically applied. The alterations follow the instructions sent by the RAPS – Regulatory Affairs & Product Safety global department for the Fragrance Division and the PSRA – Product Safety & Regulatory Affairs global department for the Flavours Division. Both departments determine the corporate policy for the product regulatory affairs and safety.

The Quality department has monthly meetings with the production employees and audits the department to check if the behavioral and safety procedures are fully followed. By doing so, they ensure the company’s quality standards. The Quality and Operational managers’ inspection visits to the plant can be unscheduled.

Food safety

The company has a food safety program certified and recognized by two reference entities – AIB International and GMA Safe. In addition to that, Givaudan is getting prepared to have the FSSC 22000 certification (Food Safety System Certification), based on ISO 22000. Those certifications are globally recognized by main food producers.

Products and service assessment methods

There are different processes that customers make use to assess Givaudan. Many of the customers are globally renowned corporation that follow strict quality standards and adopt specific procedures to assess the quality of the service of raw material suppliers. KPIs – Key Performance Indicators Givaudan adopts must be aligned with the customers KPIs.

Some customers audit their supplier’s facilities and processes annually. Others award suppliers for best performances. Givaudan has been constantly awarded for striving for delivering a high quality service and having open partnership with customers. In 2010 the company received various certifications and awards: Qlicar Award, for being the Best Fragrances Supplier, from Natura; Golden Supplier, from Casas Granado; Golden Certification, from Johnson’s. Besides, the company has also received the Social Responsibility Award and Gold for Excellence Awards for Services, Customer Service, Delivery, Creativity and Technology, both from O Boticário.

Givaudan frequently conducts surveys that assess the level of satisfaction regarding products and services. The last one occurred in 2009 and the company intends to continue using that tool in 2011.

In 2010, Givaudan was placed among the “50 most” that elected the 100 Best Companies at Organizational Human Development Index promoted by Gestão & RH magazine. The election took into account criteria such as citizenship actions, sustainability, governance and human capital.