Climate change

How we manage our impact: strategy and governance

Impacts, risks, and opportunities

For disclosures related to our positive impact and opportunity on low-carbon solutions see section Our sustainable solutions (new window).

Climate-related risks and opportunities assessment

Climate-related risks, including heatwaves, droughts, and water stress, have the potential to affect both our manufacturing sites and our value chain. We therefore update our climate-related impacts and risk assessment on an annual basis, using the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). The TCFD distinguishes between two categories of climate-related risks: risks related to the transition to a low-carbon economy; and risks related to the physical impacts of climate change. The scope of our risk assessment includes all our manufacturing sites as well as our upstream and downstream value chain. Our downstream value chain analysis has been limited, as this is not where we see our main risks, nor do we have a large influence.

We distinguish between the short, medium, and long term in our analysis. For physical risks, we have used a different timeframe than for the DMA:

• Short term: refers to the reporting year

• Medium term: refers to time between the reporting year and 2030

• Long term: refers to time between 2030 and 2050

We have taken this approach to reflect the long timeframe over which climate and nature risks evolve. Our overall expectation is that transition risks are more likely to manifest in the short and medium term, while physical risks become more relevant in the long term. Our climate risk assessment methodology is aligned with our general enterprise risk methodology (ERM).

Scenario analysis

We have conducted scenario analysis to explore different plausible futures based on assumptions about societal development, demographics, economic growth, technology, and policy choices under different time horizons. We have determined our risks and opportunities within these scenarios to understand our resilience levels. We have considered the following two scenarios based on IPCC’s Shared Socioeconomic Pathways:

Taking the green road (1.5°C)

In this scenario, significant actions are taken to keep global warming well below 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. This involves widespread adoption of renewable energy sources including biogas and hydrogen, increased energy efficiency, and global implementation of carbon pricing regulation, plus a strong focus on research and development of clean technologies, such as high-temperature heat pumps. Policies are implemented to promote sustainable development, reduce resource consumption, and protect ecosystems. Consumer preferences increase towards low-carbon, healthy, and nature-friendly products.

Taking the highway (4 – 5°C)

In this scenario, insufficient mitigation actions are taken to limit the greenhouse gas emissions, resulting in significant warming of 4–5°C. Continuing on a fossil fuel-based path, energy and commodity prices remain stable in the short-term, before being affected by climate disasters and other disruptions in the medium and long term. Climate hazards, such as droughts and reduced water availability, impact production continuity at our sites and decrease raw material availability. In this scenario, the transition risks are lower, as implementation of environmental policies is limited. 

In 2022, we have organized climate-risk workshops with senior management for each of our business units, assessing transition and physical risks. Since then, we have built on the outcome to further improve on the methodology and validate the outcome. We have made the following additional steps: 

Own operations

In our considerations of the scenarios mentioned above, we used a climate-risk modeling tool to identify potential climate hazards at our manufacturing sites and how these would evolve over time. ­­­In this analysis the following climate hazards were included: extreme cold and heat, coastal flooding, hurricanes, intense precipitation, river flooding, water availability, and wildfire. The model results were further assessed by site management, who added site-specific know-how and experience. This enabled us to translate the climate hazards into company-specific risks.

Based on all these inputs, we conclude that physical climate risk is low in our own operations.

Value chain

In the value chain, we have focused our analysis on the main raw materials based on volume and sector vulnerability. Our analysis of agricultural raw materials included cane sugar, wheat, and corn dextrose, while lime and sulfuric acid were included as chemical raw materials. Taken together, these represent roughly 50% of our purchased raw materials. This means we excluded all other raw materials and other parts of the value chain such as transport and capital goods, taking into account time and resources versus expected risks.

When assessing climate risk in the supply chain, we used the same risk modeling tool to investigate sugarcane, our main agricultural crop, based on the same climate hazards as used in our own operations. Rising temperatures could reduce the crop yield of sugarcane by some 10% in Thailand in the mid-2050 scenario, based on current farming practices. We are therefore engaging with our sugar suppliers to understand possible adaptation solutions, including the use of new watering systems that contribute to lower evaporation levels. In Brazil, the climate model shows a flat sugarcane yield. Wheat and corn were assessed through desk research and expert interviews. Our investigation suggests that the climate impact on agricultural yields will be lower for these raw materials. For lime and sulfuric acid, the risk is related to potential increase in prices when carbon pricing materializes in the sectors from which we source these chemicals.

Policies

Our Climate Policy applies to our manufacturing sites in all areas where we operate, as well as to our value chain (scope 3). Our policy aims to address Corbion’s impact on climate change as well as the physical and transition risks related to climate change.

Climate change mitigation and transition risks

Corbion is committed to:

• Reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement, guided by the latest climate science through energy efficiency improvements and the use of renewable energy

• Working with suppliers and other stakeholders in our value chain to reduce our scope 3 emissions

• Investing in high quality GHG removals to neutralize remaining emissions that cannot be eliminated

• Helping our customers reduce their carbon footprint by providing products with a low carbon footprint

To support these commitments, we use internal carbon pricing to increase awareness about the potential financial impact of GHG emissions and ensure that this is factored into our decision making. We do this by applying an internal carbon price of € 100 per metric ton of CO₂e for all scope 1 and 2 emissions and use this as a sensitivity analysis in all investment decisions. This price was estimated by the UN as a minimum price required to meet the 1.5°C to 2°C scenario. For investments in the EU, we work with different EU ETS pricing scenarios, ranging from € 90 to € 150 in 2030. Across all our innovation projects, we take carbon impact into account through the sustainability assessment at each stage gate. The climate impact of innovation projects informs our portfolio management and prioritization.

Climate change adaptation and physical risks

Corbion recognizes the importance of adapting to the impacts of climate change and building resilience. Our main physical risk is related to our agriculture-derived raw materials. We engage with our sugar suppliers in risk areas to understand their resilience to climate change. Our Supplier Code, Cane Sugar Code, and Cane Sugar Policy include requirements related to climate change mitigation and adaptation. To learn more about our supplier policies, see Biodiversity (new window). To read about stakeholder engagement and the governance of all our policies, see General information (new window). Our Climate Policy and our supplier policies support the achievement of our CO₂ reduction targets mitigating both our impact on climate and our transition risks. The Chief Technology Officer, Chief Operating Officer, and VP Sustainability hold joint accountability for the implementation of our Climate Policy.

Climate Mitigation and Transition Plan

Our Climate Mitigation and Transition Plan was approved by the Executive Committee and the Supervisory Board. It applies to our entire value chain.

Scope 1 and 2 roadmap

To align our global operations with the realization of a low-carbon future, we have developed a detailed roadmap based on the following decarbonization levers:

Decarbonization levers for scope 1 and 2:

• Reducing our energy consumption through energy efficiency. Specific actions include replacing outdated, inefficient equipment with energy-efficient models, improving insulation , and installing smart management systems for real-time monitoring of energy consumption.

• Electrification of fossil-fuel driven systems. Specific actions include the installation of heat pumps, mechanical vapor recompression, and e-boilers.

• Implementing renewable electricity solutions to reduce emissions from energy generation. Specific actions include the installation of solar panels on site and the purchase of off-site renewable electricity, through power purchase agreements or by purchasing renewable electricity certificates.

• Introducing renewable heat solutions to support our transition from fossil fuels to renewable alternatives such as biogas and hydrogen.

• Process innovation to decarbonize the lactic acid production process.

Implementation of renewable electricity is ongoing for over five years and we are on track to fully convert to renewable electricity by 2025. Actions related to energy efficiency and electrification are ongoing, starting with projects that are financially most attractive. We expect the financial attractiveness of these project to improve over time, with evolving carbon pricing regulations. Actions related to renewable heat and process innovation are currently in the investigation stage. We aim to start the implementation of renewable heat solutions at some locations by 2030, which will continue between 2030 and 2040. Implementation of process innovations related to lactic acid is planned after 2030.

Scope 3 roadmap

Decarbonization levers for scope 3:

• Process innovation to decarbonize the lactic acid process. An example is the new circular technology for lactic acid which is implemented in our new lactic acid facility in Thailand. While this technology reduces scope 3 emissions, it does lead to an increase of our scope 1 emissions due to the increased use of energy to enable the recycling of process chemicals. Net cradle to gate emissions are reduced.

• Implementing resource efficiency measures to reduce consumption of raw materials and waste generation. Specific actions include continued R&D to further improve process circularity, additional process optimization initiatives, and collaborations with supply chain partners to valorize waste where possible.

• Engaging with suppliers to promote climate action in our supply chain. Specific actions include raw material certification, collaboration to identify emission-reduction opportunities, and pilots with strategic suppliers.

• Through global climate action, national grids will use more electricity from low-carbon sources. This will further support our scope 3 reductions.

All of these actions are ongoing and will continue beyond 2030.

To deliver on our net-zero commitment, we will neutralize remaining unabated emissions (< 10%) through carbon removals and permanent storage solutions. We closely follow relevant developments in this field, and will invest in high-quality neutralization of any residual emissions (beyond 2040).

Capital allocation

Our transition plan aims to transition our current assets to net zero by 2050 in the most cost effective way, through process improvements, by replacing fuel sources with renewable sources, and by implementing new technologies. This includes retrofitting of existing assets. As we produce biobased products, we only have biogenic emissions from our products, not accounting as GHG emissions. 

To achieve the goals outlined in the roadmap above, we have developed an investment plan for 2024-2030. It defines over 50 specific projects for our Corbion manufacturing sites, including CapEx estimations for each project. These projects are essential steps on our roadmap to achieve our targets.

Projects are prioritized based on payback time and planned in alignment with other CapEx projects; this maximizes synergies and ensures focus on high-impact areas. From a financial perspective, short-term actions have included integrating the required resources and CapEx into our budget. In 2025, we plan to spend € 2.5 million OpEx and € 2 million CapEx to implement the roadmap. In the medium to long term, the transition plan will require considerable additional investment, for which a balanced decision must be made between investments. External developments such as regulation, carbon pricing, net congestion, and the availability of cost-effective renewable energy sources and technologies as well as our business performance, may impact our ability to allocate resources.

Climate mitigation capital allocation until 2030

Environmental transparency and accountability are vital for tracking progress towards a low-carbon economy. Corbion reports its environmental data through CDP, to provide transparency to investors, customers and other stakeholders. CDP is the gold standard for corporate environmental reporting and is fully aligned with the TCFD recommendations

Climate adaptation plan

We engage with our sugar suppliers in risk areas to understand their resilience to climate change. Our supplier code, cane sugar code and cane sugar policy include requirements related to climate change mitigation and adaptation. The implementation of our Climate Mitigation and Transition Plan involves colleagues from Manufacturing, Engineering, Finance, and Sustainability, and Procurement.

Resilience of our strategy to climate change

Using the outcome of the impacts, risks and opportunities under the different climate scenarios, we have assessed the resilience of our strategy to climate change in 2024.

Taking the green road

In this scenario, consumer preferences towards low carbon, healthy and nature-friendly products increase, and significant actions are taken to promote sustainable development, reduce resource consumption, and protect ecosystems. Corbion’s Advance 2025 strategy invests in key growth areas such as natural food preservation, algae-based ingredients, lactic acid derivatives, and natural polymers. These investments allow Corbion to take advantage of opportunities related to Climate change, Biodiversity, Circular economy, and Consumer health. This allows Corbion to capitalize on the developments in this scenario. Through implementation of our Climate Mitigation and Transition Plan, we will reduce our GHG emissions, which mitigates the risk of carbon pricing.

Taking the highway

In this scenario temperatures will rise 4-5°C degrees, which leads to increased physical climate risks, especially in our upstream value chain. We mitigate these risks through our security of supply program, our business continuity program and our global manufacturing footprint. Through these programs, we can ensure operational continuity even if certain suppliers or regions face climate-related challenges. We source ingredients from multiple regions, reducing our dependence on any single climate zone and maximizing stability if extreme weather impacts specific areas. Moreover, we work closely with our suppliers to adopt sustainable farming practices that enhance soil health and water conservation, reducing the impact of climate change. Based on our current assessment, we do not expect the impact of physical risks in our own operations to be significant. Our global footprint mitigates potential supply chain disruptions. Climate and nature risk assessments are integrated in our business continuity planning to ensure that we take appropriate mitigation measures where needed. In this scenario, business opportunities related to low carbon products will be less relevant. We expect that other trends would not be materially different.

We acknowledge that our method for identifying impacts, risks, and opportunities is prone to many uncertainties and that our methodologies can be further developed, to make more accurate assessments. In the coming years, we intend to increase the scope of our value chain included in the assessment, and to increase the accuracy of our risk quantification. In addition, the assumptions in the climate scenarios are high level and include a limited number of assumptions. The assumptions can be further detailed in the future. The physical climate risk assessment is based on geospatial coordinates (in 25km2 resolution) of our sites and cane sugar suppliers.

Financial resilience

We have not identified any risks or opportunities that have influenced our Financial statements in the reporting year. In addition, in neither climate scenario did we identify any risks or opportunities that have influenced our Financial statements.

Performance

Targets

To ensure that our climate goals are based on the best available science, we have adopted the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) as a framework for setting and validating our targets.

Following the divestment of our Emulsifiers business, we have updated our emissions-reduction targets, in line with the latest SBTi requirements. We are committed to reducing our absolute scope 1 and 2 emissions by 42% and our absolute scope 3 emissions by 25% by 2030, compared to 2021. We are also committed to reach net-zero GHG emissions across the value chain by 2050. Our new targets have been submitted for validation to the Science Based Targets initiative in 2024. The scope of the target is all Corbion sites and offices for scope 1 and 2 emissions and includes 67% of scope 3 emissions in line with SBTi requirements, thereby focusing on high-emission categories where we can make an impact. With these targets, we aim to comply with the criteria for inclusion in the EU Paris aligned benchmarks.

See Stakeholder engagement (new window) for more information on how our stakeholders were involved in setting targets.

Our base year represents our current inventory and typical GHG profile, selected based on the SBTi guidelines for choosing a base year. Base year emissions adjustments are reviewed annually. If the cumulative impact of all changes to the base year inventory is equal or higher than 5%, the base year is adjusted with the latest information available.

Changes in targets and metrics

In 2024, we divested our Emulsifiers business and following the GHG protocol, all emissions related to the Emulsifiers business divestment in reported years are removed from the calculation. This is done to maintain consistency with the base year calculation and avoids having to recalculate base year emissions again next year. In scope 3 category 4 and 9 recalculations of base year and prior year were done to improve the data quality and includes updating transport emissions according to the Global Logistics Emissions Council.

Actions and progress

Compared to 2023, our scope 1 and 2 emissions increased due to business growth and due to the start-up of the new circular lactic acid plant in Thailand. Our new circular lactic acid technology enables the recycling of processing chemicals, reducing scope 3 emissions, which consumes additional energy compared to the conventional lactic acid process, leading to an increase of our scope 1 emissions. Overall, the cradle-to-gate GHG emissions of the new technology are >30% reduced compared to the conventional lactic acid production in Thailand. Our scope 1 and 2 emissions are expected to further increase in the coming years due to business growth and further ramping up of our circular lactic acid plant. The resulting increase of our emissions is higher than the impact of the emission reductions measures that we have implemented. From 2027/2028 onwards, we expect our scope 1 and 2 emissions to decrease due to the implementation of renewable heat. Our scope 3 emissions also increased compared to last year, which is caused by increased purchases of raw materials, product mix effects, and increased emissions for both transport of raw materials and of finished goods.

Actions taken in 2024 for our scope 1 and 2 emissions

Energy efficiency

• We initiated an energy scan at our site in Blair (US), where we have already identified opportunities for heat integration for which implementation will start in 2025.

• In Gorinchem (the Netherlands) the energy scan is being updated. First improvement projects resulting from this scan will be implemented in 2025.

• We implemented real-time monitoring of our steam consumption in Gorinchem, which is expected to bring benefits in 2025. The implementation of real-time electricity monitoring is ongoing.

• We set site-specific energy efficiency targets for the six manufacturing sites with the highest energy consumption. All sites have met their site-specific target. Next to energy savings, these targets also increased awareness, ownership and commitment among colleagues.

Electrification

• We prepared for the installation of a new electrically driven evaporator in Gorinchem by the first quarter of 2025.

• We evaluated the feasibility of heat pumps for different parts of our processes. The resulting projects have been included in our 2030 roadmap.

Renewable heat

• We continued the evaluation of feasible alternative fuels for heat production at our sites in Gorinchem (the Netherlands), Montmeló (Spain), Blair (US), and Rayong (Thailand). 

Process innovation

• We continued our long-term innovation program and initiated several new projects.

Actions taken in 2024 for scope 3 emissions

Raw material efficiency

• In 2025, we started up our new circular lactic acid plant in Thailand. Lactic acid produced by this first-of-its-kind facility will have the lowest associated carbon footprint compared to any manufacturing technologies currently used. The recycling of processing chemicals eliminates the use of lime, which is a significant contributor to our scope 3 GHG emissions.

Supplier engagement

• We continued engaging and supporting suppliers in the development of their CO₂ reduction plans, focusing on high-impact suppliers.

• We collected primary data for some 65% of GHG emissions from raw materials included in our target scope.

• Engagement with our chemicals suppliers resulted in the implementation of renewable electricity (ISCC plus certified) for one of our raw materials from 2025 onwards.

• We evaluated the outcome of the RegenConnect program, a collaboration with Cargill, our corn dextrose supplier, focused on improving soil health as well as on carbon sequestration. Due to its limited contribution to our climate targets, we decided not to continue with this initiative. We are currently investigating alternative programs.

Logistics

• We increased the use of intermodal freight transport over truck transportation in the EU, resulting in a significant emission reduction.

• We initiated development of a logistics roadmap for the US.

Metrics

Gross scope 1, 2, 3 emissions, and total GHG emissions (tons CO₂e)

Emission intensity