Consumer health and product safety

For us, consumer health and product safety goes beyond regulatory compliance. We have a proactive approach to identifying potential risks, innovating safer ingredient solutions, and continuously improving our processes to meet the highest industry standards.

In addition to being safe, we consider it essential for foods to look, smell, and taste fresh at the point of consumption. We have an equally strong commitment to supplying our customers and partners with high quality and safe products and ingredients that they use to make their products or provide their services.

How we manage our impact: strategy and governance

Impacts, risks, and opportunities

Corbion is a business-to-business company, delivering ingredients to its customers, who use these in their products. That means Corbion does not have direct engagement with consumers and end users. Examples of Corbion’s end-consumers are people who purchase food products containing our ingredients, or patients that receive medical or pharmaceutical care that makes use of our biomaterials.

For disclosures related to the impact and opportunity on the topic Solutions for biomedical, pharma, nutrition, and food safety, see Our sustainable solutions (new window).

Policies

Our Global Quality Policy (new window) describes Corbion’s commitment to developing, manufacturing, distributing, and marketing safe, sustainable, and effective products and solutions throughout the world. Our activities are supported by a quality management system that includes policies, procedures, and training. This policy is the foundation for our Global Quality Manual and applies to all Corbion locations.

Our Global Quality Manual, an application of ISO9001 for Corbion’s unique context, is applied across all our sites and business units worldwide. It underlines our drive for continuous quality improvement and food risk reduction. To monitor our effectiveness and ensure continuous improvement, we follow a process-based approach to quality management that includes performance evaluation and improvement of organizational processes. We have internal auditing in place and work with governmental and certification bodies that challenge Corbion to comply with relevant policies and procedures. If any nonconformities are noted during these processes, we initiate improvements or corrective actions.

Our Senior Director Global Quality is responsible for implementing the policy and manual, supported by quality managers for every site and Corbion employees of every level and function.

Alongside our global procedures, we operate in compliance with local regulations and legislation while ensuring certifications are in place to meet customer preferences and industry-adopted standards and requirements; these include ISO 9001, Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI), BRC, FSSC22000, SQF, GMP+, GMP Pharma (ICHQ7), the Food Safety Modernization Act, Halal, Kosher, non-GMO, and Organic.

Engagement and remediation

Though Corbion’s relationship with consumers is indirect, we use customer feedback to improve our approaches to product development and quality management. For information, see Interests and views of our stakeholders (new window). Occasionally, we receive feedback from our customers regarding complaints or suggestions from consumers, for example about the taste or smell of products. This feedback is collected and acted upon by product management. Our Chief Operating Officer is operationally responsible for any of the feedback that reaches us from consumers. The management team of the business lines and product managers are responsible for managing the relationship with our customers.

Performance

Targets

For our Functional Ingredients & Solutions business unit, food safety is a key priority for multiple reasons, including its importance for production quality, avoiding spoilage and contamination, supply chain traceability, and ensuring appropriate allergy labeling. All 12 Corbion manufacturing sites that produce food ingredients are certified against a standard recognized by the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) – a business-driven, multi-stakeholder initiative that supports the continuous improvement of food safety management systems.

We do not engage consumers directly in setting our targets or tracking performance over time, as our primary engagement is with customers. We do, however, have a close relationship with our customers, and stay connected to consumer trends through our business line management and product managers.

Actions and progress

Our actions on product quality and safety are part of a continuous cycle of activities that we internally review and externally audit. Our actions focus on our own operations.

Each Corbion site uses our Global Quality Manual in line with ISO9001 and applies this to its local context. Our manufacturing sites in Gorinchem (the Netherlands) and Montmeló (Spain), have a pharmaceutical registration in addition to their food certification, and our Biomedical sites in Gorinchem (the Netherlands), and Tucker (US), produce biopharmaceuticals without a food certification.

Another key action is our hosting of customer audits, which are mostly conducted by our pharmaceutical customers and large food clients. Together with our self-assessment audits performed as part of our Global Quality Platform, these ensure that we continue to improve our operational standards for quality and food safety. Our Global Quality Platform consists of all Corbion quality managers who ensure implementation of our policies and procedures.

We track the effectiveness of our quality and food safety by closely monitoring complaints and recalls. In 2024, we maintained all certifications and continued harmonizing the quality management of different Corbion locations in line with the policies of our Global Quality Manual.

We take food safety risks very seriously and focus on proactive and preventative management. If product recalls happen, we fully comply with the actions prescribed by the relevant food authorities. In the event of a recall, Corbion has fixed procedures in place, including the assembly of a multi-disciplinary team to identify which products need to be recalled and coordinate our response. We also conduct yearly mock recalls for each site, with the results of these drills reported internally. 

Each Corbion site has its own quality training program; these typically contain onboarding and other educational procedures for employees, plus working instructions and forms to capture proof that employees have read and understood instructions.

In 2024, we noted no non-compliances with product quality and safety regulations or codes.

The costs related to product quality are part of our operations budget and are included in Cost of Sales in the Consolidated income statement (new window).