Croda International has broken ground for a low-carbon, multi-purpose production facility on a greenfield site in Guangzhou. This triples its manufacturing capacity for fragrances and establishes its fist production capability for beauty actives, mainly botanicals, in China. It is also part of the company’s plan to deliver fast growth in Asia. 

Croda International has bought Solus Biotech from Korea’s Solus Advanced Materials for about $277 million, subject to regulatory approval. Solus Biotech makes biotechnology-derived beauty actives, notably naturally derived powder ceramides and GMP phospholipids for both pharmaceutical and cosmetic applications. Both are high-growth markets, with the number of new personal care products containing ceramides doubling over the last five years.

Waste2Func, a European BBI-JU funded project, has been granted €6.7 million to build a technology platform. This will collect food waste from agriculture, food manufacturing, supermarkets, auctions and restaurants, and convert it via fermentation and purification into lactic acid and biosurfactants with applications in cosmetics, personal care and household care products. The project began in June 2021 and will end in November 2024, with a total budget of €13.965 million.

Croda International has placed first in the chemical sector for the fifth year running in the Britain’s Most Admired Companies study for 2021. Overall, it placed eights of 280 companies in 27 sectors. Britain’s Most Admired Companies dates back to 1900 and is the UK’s longest running annual survey of corporate reputation. The winners are voted by 300 board representatives, analysts and City commentators, who rank companies from 0 (poor) to 10 (excellent) in 13 criteria.

Croda has agreed to sell most of its Performance Technologies & Industrial Chemicals (PTIC) business to Cargill Velocity Holdings, a wholly owned subsidiary of Cargill in a €915 million deal should close in the summer of 2022, subject to regulatory approvals and consultation with employee representatives. The company had stated its intention to reviewing ownership options for PTIC in May 2021.

Croda International is to conduct a strategic review of its Performance Technologies and Industrial Chemicals (PTIC) businesses during 2021, to decide on the best ownership structure going forward. Full or partial divestment and a spin-off are all options, the company said.

Croda International has come first in the Most Sustainable International Company rankings for companies headquartered outside the US. Calvert Research and Management, a responsible investment management firm, carried these rankings out for financial news source Barron’s. It analysed more than 230 key performance indicators of environmental, social and governance performance.