At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the IFF 20 19 Sustainability Call. All participants will be in a listen only mode until the formal question and answer portion of the call.
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would now like to introduce Michael DeVoe, Head of Investor Relations and Communications. You may begin.
Thank you. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening, everyone. Thank you for joining us today to learn about IFS sustainability efforts, a topic of increasing importance for all our stakeholders. Last Thursday, we published our 2019 Sustainability Report, which has provided the foundation for today's important discussion. The report can be found on our website at ifs.com/sustain.
Before we begin, I ask that you please take a moment to review our forward looking statements. During the call, we will be making forward looking statements about our long term environmental, social and governance or ESG targets and goals. These statements are based on how we see things today and contain elements of uncertainty. For additional information concerning the factors that can cause actual results to differ materially from our forward looking statements, please refer to our cautionary statement and risk factors contained in our 10 ks filed on March 3, 2020. Today, I'm joined by an excellent group of speakers that will highlight how IFF approaches its sustainability, priorities and commitments from the Board level and a senior management perspective, as well as in the day to day execution across our 13,000 plus employee organization.
With me is IFF Chairman and CEO, Andreas Pivit our Chief Scientific and Sustainability Officer, Doctor. Greg Yip and our VP of Global Sustainability, Kit Cleverly, who all speak to the significant progress made and roadmap to achieving our sustainable purpose and vision. We will start with prepared remarks and then take any questions that you may have. We have two ways to ask your question. If you like, please feel free to e mail me at michael.
Duveauff. Daveauff.com and I will happily ask your question. Or please feel free to ask your question live after our prepared remarks. With that, I would now like to introduce our Chairman and CEO, Andreas Fedning.
Thank you, Mike. During this presentation, we will provide an overview of our sustainability driven purpose and strategy and review our recent efforts to achieve this vision, including key highlights from our 2019 reporting year. But most importantly, we will also outline the remaining work to be done and the sustainability initiatives that will carry IFF forward towards our ambitious goals and objectives. As ESG initiatives become increasingly critical to our business and the world around us, We are hosting this webcast to share our perspective and key metrics on these important topics, and this is an important step forward for our company. Thank you for joining us today, and we are happy to open the floor up for questions following remarks from our team.
As someone who is deeply committed to sustainability on a personal level, I'm so proud of the progress that IFF has made to serve and protect our planet and people around the globe. As Mike noted earlier on this call, you can find an overview of our 2019 accomplishments in our latest sustainability report, which was published last week and is available on our website. If you haven't had the chance to review it, I hope you will take this opportunity to do so. I must acknowledge our team that has worked so hard over the past year to create such an impressive rapport for our organization. After our acquisition of Frutarom in 2018, we took the opportunity to begin IFF's 1st major rebrand in 40 years.
Not only did we create a new logo, but importantly, we established our new purpose: to redefine how we live and care for the resources of our world. Leading a more sustainable approach to the business is at very core of this purpose. In many ways, this purpose was a natural outcome of our evolution as a company that truly embraces sustainability as an integral part of our business. While IFF has accomplished so much throughout our more than 130 years history, I believe that our success, both as a company and as individuals, requires us to constantly challenge the status quo and be a driver of change, not only for the success of our business, but for the health and safety of our planet. That is why we place sustainability at the front and center of everything we do.
Our success in sustainability is only made possible by the passion of our people. Fortunately, our global teams are all in behind this mission and work tirelessly to identify areas of improvement, strategize, plan and execute to the best of their ability. While our most recent sustainability report revealed some impressive progress, these results are a direct reflection of the exceptional day to day commitment from IFFS. Following the acquisition of Frutarom, we also developed a new strategic framework, Vision 2021, to focus the organization on our ambition to become the leader in taste center nutrition. In order to create a stronger, more profitable and differentiated IFF, reliant on our 4 strategic pillars: unlocking growth opportunities driving innovation managing the portfolio, accelerating business transformation.
Prioritizing sustainability became and remains a key enabler for each of these core pillars. And as we had envisioned, a focus on sustainability has given us the opportunity to take a leadership role in our industry. We know that putting sustainability and ESG considerations at the core of our purpose and strategy is part of our responsibility and is of utmost importance to our stakeholders, including investors who are looking for a clear understanding how we are addressing sustainability related questions. For this reason, communicating our commitments to improved and more transparent disclosures is also vital to advancing our strategy. We're also thinking more broadly about how we can accelerate our impact and drive transformational change.
As we look ahead to the future, sustainability will be an important part of how we achieve our long term company objectives, all while making a positive contribution to society. Since sustainability is so central to our Vision 2021 strategy, we have also developed a specific approach with underlying priorities. Our sustainability framework comprises 4 key pillars: reduce environmental footprint strengthen responsible sourcing drive sustainable innovation and embrace people and communities. Within these strategic pillars, we aim to achieve several more concrete objectives. We aim to reduce our environmental footprint to mitigate climate change, conserve water and eliminate waste in our operations.
This is good for the planet and our bottom line. We are increasing the sourcing of our materials and ensuring an ethical, traceable and resilient supply chain, especially for our natural raw materials. We are continuing to embed sustainability and circular design into our innovation pipeline. And we are focused on building a diverse and inclusive culture while giving back to the communities in which we source and operate. These are the 4 areas in which we believe we can use our influence to help address global sustainability challenges such as climate crisis.
Our approach is based on the concept of a circular economy that is restorative and regenerative by design, with a strategy that addresses the ESG topics most material to both our company and our stakeholders. In doing so, IFF can even more effectively drive our triple bottom line approach to create value in line with our brand purpose. A key focus area for this strategy is to keep our customers at the center of all we do. IFF partners with some of the most sustainable and responsible companies in the world, which expect that we can support their ambitions. And what should come as a surprise to no one, consumers are driving these goals in a very real ways.
These are demanding greater transparency throughout the supply chain and holding all of us accountable for our actions or inactions. They will vote with their ballots and with their voices, particularly on social media, which makes our support and alignment imperative for our business success. But there's another driver at play here, talent attraction and retention. The talent we want to attract are the same people who are attracted to responsible companies and who see our purpose as their purpose. Our people understand that every day, they can have a positive impact on their communities and the environments through the work that we do.
So as we see it, IFF has a duty to answer to not only our customers and consumers, but also to our own people, whose passion helps drive our achievements at a foundational level. With that, I would like to turn it over to Greg Yap, our Chief Scientific and Sustainability Officer.
Thanks, Andreas. To provide additional context for sustainability discussion, it's worth reviewing how we define ESG at IFF. As you will see in our sustainability report and as Andreas mentioned in the last slide, we have assessed and defined the most material topics for IFF, that is the risk, opportunities and concerns that are most important to our business and our stakeholders within these three categories. Environmental topics include those related to the conservation of our planet and its natural resources such as climate change and biodiversity. It also encompasses how we embed sustainability into our research and development processes through the adoption of our circular design principles.
Within our social topics, we consider the health and wellness of our consumers, ensure responsible sourcing, including the outpouring of our commitment to human rights and ethical label practices and support strong employee and community engagement and opportunities, including our commitments to diversity and inclusion. Governance topics outline the standards we uphold for running a responsible company characterized by strong ethics and transparency, risk management practices and product responsibility. We have worked hard to develop effective management approaches and accompanying metrics for our most important ESG topics, which has resulted in significant broad based improvement since we began our program nearly 10 years ago. We are pleased to have work validated by a number of independent third party providers of ESG research ratings recognitions for our investors. Among rating and ranking providers such as Sustainalytics, MSCI and Bloomberg ESG, IFF is recognized as a global leader.
For example, at the end of 2019, Sustainalytics ranked us with an overall ESG score of 79 out of 100, placing us in the 96 percentile of companies with a relative position of 6 out of 127 companies in our industry. Similarly, we are ranked as AA by MSCI as a position we have consistently held for the last several years and consistently higher than the industry average for environmental topics such as water, waste and carbon emissions. Our performance on key ESG measurements not only translates to higher rankings, but also a high profile and influential recognitions, such as the 2019 Industry Mover Award from SAM, a subsidiary of Robeco SAM. We've also been named to the Euronext Vidyo's World 120 Index for ESG performance and the FTSE For Good Index series. For CDP, we have earned a place in A List for the climate change for the 5th consecutive year and A List for the world security for the 2nd consecutive year, we have also achieved A on our CDB for us for the first time in 2019.
On EcoVadis, which accesses companies on our environmental human rights ethics and sustainable procurement, we received a gold rating in 2019 and an overall score of 72 out of 100 placed against the 99th percent of companies assessed. Finally, as an additional demonstration recommended to these key on our commitment to these key issues, IFS has joined several sustainable organizations, including among others, the UN Global Impact and the World Business Council For Sustainable Development, where we represented both executive and the operating committees. Our sustainability strategy is also guided by the United Nations' 17 Sustainable Development Goals or SDGs. We have made significant progress in our work to support the SDGs, which is outlined in a more detailed report. We will now turn it over to Kipp to share more of our 4 pillars of our sustainability strategy.
Thank you, Greg. The first of our 4 pillars is environmental footprint, and I am pleased to say we are not only executing on our 2020 objectives, but are also on track to achieve our 2025 ambitions. To provide some additional context for these goals, we have noted here on the left some of our external commitments towards environmental progress and climate action. We have aligned with a number of well respected organizations and signed on to several key initiatives to support wider industry action on environmental issues. For example, in 2019, we joined other companies in signing the United Nations Business Ambition for 1.5 Degrees, our only future pledge, a campaign to limit global temperature rise through science based targets.
We are also a member of RE100, a leadership initiative for businesses committed to 100% renewable electricity. As you can see here by the green check marks, we have already met and surpassed 3 out of our 4 of our legacy IFF 2020 intensity based goals against a 2020 baseline. The 4th of those 2020 goals to reduce our energy intensity by 20% is noted here with an orange circle. We continue to progress on this goal to drive energy efficiency forward. Over the past 5 years or so, we have learned that energy intensity is driven by product mix.
So as we look forward, our metrics are moving to increase renewable energy and reduce absolute emissions as a more effective way to mitigate climate change. This is a good transition to our next set of eco effective plus 2025 goals. We are on track to meet these goals against the 2015 baseline as depicted here with the yellow circles. This includes our approved science based target to reduce our absolute greenhouse gas emissions by 30%. We are already more than halfway there with a 19.5% emissions reduction since 2015 and a 5.7% reduction from prior year, exceeding our expectations.
Increasing renewable electricity and minimizing our reliance on fossil fuels is another key area of our environmental pillar. I am pleased to report that more than half of our operations are now run on clean renewable electricity and we have just opened the largest on-site solar field in the industry, which will power our R and D center in Union Beach, New Jersey. Importantly, all of these efforts are in line with our triple bottom line approach that is not only good for the environment, but also in reducing costs. As a critical partner in the global consumer goods supply chain, we are constantly sourcing raw materials required to deliver our broad offering across business segments. Our responsible sourcing pillar is all about accelerating ethical standards to ensure a resilient supply chain.
IFF's supply chain is broad and complex. In fact, we purchased more than 40,000 different raw materials from an extensive network of suppliers and distributors around the world. We have rigorous quality and sustainability expectations for these suppliers, as well as multiple systems and partners in place to help us assess, prioritize and drive sustainability throughout our supply chain. For example, approximately 75% of IFS legacy's direct global spend was with suppliers assessed through EcoVadis or Setex, 2 well respected supply chain platforms that help us to drive improvement in labor standards, health and safety, environmental management and ethical business conduct. We also use the EcoVadis platform to assess ourselves as a supplier to our customers.
And as Greg mentioned earlier, we are pleased to receive gold status in 2019. As part of our science based target, we have an accompanying goal to engage suppliers representing 70% of our legacy IFF supply chain emissions by 2025. This includes having them set their own science based targets and report their emissions annually. Working with CDP Supply Chain, we have already engaged our suppliers Certifications are also an important consideration for how we source materials, and we strive to align ourselves with the most credible, internationally recognized third party certification standards such as BOR LIFE, FairWild and eZegan. In our Naturals division, LMR, we currently have 9 natural ingredients that are certified annually through the 4 Life program, such as turkey and geranium oil from Egypt.
We also have an industry leading number of 90 natural extracts in our portfolio that are certified e vegan. Having these partners and third party verifications ensures that we have visibility all the way from the farm level for these critical natural materials. And although we use less than 0.1% of the palm oil produced worldwide, we are members of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil or RSPO. I am proud to report that we are on track to meet our goal of having 100% of the palm oil use in our products be RSPO certified by the end of 2020. Finally, an important part of our building a resilient supply chain is making sure we are supporting our smallholder farmers and grower communities.
We work with industry partners and local on the ground experts to help us set up and execute these programs, and we have several great examples of this work in our report. We would particularly highlight here our Patchouli program in Indonesia, where we have already helped more than 600 farmers receive 4 Life certification, we are on track to plant 75,000 trees over the next 3 years to support reforestation and biodiversity. Similarly, we work with a partner to pilot an innovative industry first blockchain technology as a tool to ensure ingredient traceability for supply chains like blackcurrant bud in France and vanilla in Madagascar. This tool allows us to accurately track the flow of raw materials from the crop all the way to the customer, while increasing trust and transparency at every stage of the process. To underscore our commitment to the responsible sourcing of natural supply chains, 2 of our ISS family of brands, LMR and Southern Cross Botanicals, recently became full members of the Union For Ethical Biotrade, which promotes the sourcing with respect of ingredients derived from native biodiversity.
Sustainable innovation is all about driving differentiation through regenerative approaches and circular design. We are always seeking to set a higher bar for environmental and social sustainability, and this also extends to our approach to innovation and product development. We embrace circular economy principles to design waste out of the process and create closed loop systems in which materials are constantly reused. It's about shifting towards a restorative and regenerative world and moving away from a traditional and unsustainable take, make, dispose approach. Pictured here are two examples of how we apply this concept in both our scent and taste divisions.
For scent, as depicted on the upper left, we apply circular design by first designing with the planet in mind at the early stages of our product development process. We then seek to source raw materials that are renewable or repurposed in responsible ways. Next, we manufacture those products with renewable energy, 0 waste and water. We then create our products with consumer benefits in mind, such as sleep or other health applications. Finally, after the product delivers positive outcomes, our ingredients are designed to biodegrade back into the ecosystem as much as possible, completing the circular economy cycle.
A great example of this circular design model was our recent collaboration with Henry Rose, a line of fine fragrances founded by actress Michelle Pfeiffer that is setting a new precedent for transparency in the industry by disclosing 100% of its ingredients. Our perfumers worked with Henry Rose to develop 6 distinct scents that meet the highest environmental standards set by the Environmental Working Group and the Cradle to Cradle Product Innovation Institute. Working within their strict guidelines, The Sense are now the 1st in the industry to be Environmental Working Group Verified and Cradle to Cradle certified. We also embrace circular design principles in our taste business. For example, we are thinking a lot about how we can address the challenge of food waste through upcycling, a circular design principle of reusing products from typically discarded side streams.
Within our PowderPure division, we have been working to reduce food waste by converting excess fruits and vegetables such as those directly from a farm or leftover at a food processing facility into nutritious value added food ingredients for consumers. This process is outlined in the graphic on the right. Using this model, PowderPure recently launched Uncommon Harvest, a collection of upcycled powders derived from food loss streams from forms or processing facilities that are now that are not otherwise utilized. Our sustainability report includes several other innovative examples of upcycling from our reimagine programs, including using leftover orange peels from retail settings to create a new standardized orange oil and utilizing typically wasted side streams to create new flavor profiles for our IFS Taste Origins brand. These innovative processes embody the kind of thinking we will need as we move toward a world with more people and less resources.
Now to our 4th pillar, people and communities, which is all about building a fair, diverse, inclusive and safe culture for our more than 13,600 people around the world. With 38% of our global workforce composed of female employees and a 2% pay gap in favor of women in the U. S. As certified by Economic Dividends for Gender Equality or EDGE. We further solidified our strong commitment to gender parity as an organization in 2019.
This was further underscored with our signing of the UN Women's Empowerment Principles. As we look ahead on our journey toward full gender equality in the workplace, we are proud to say that we are on track to achieving full Global Ed Certification in 2020. Elsewhere, on the diversity and inclusion front in 2019, we were the 1st in our industry to sign the UN Global LGBTI Standards of Conduct for Business and were recognized by the Human Rights Campaign as a best place to work for LGBTQ Equality, following our perfect score on the 2019 Corporate Equality Index for the 2nd year in a row. As proud as we are to receive these recognitions, we know we have more work to do. Over the last few weeks, we have all seen an incredible social justice movement ignite in the U.
S. And around the world. For our part, IFF remains steadfast in our commitment to inclusion within our ranks as well as opportunity and diversity within our practices. We recently launched an inclusive competency model globally and have developed a global unconscious bias training that will launch in July 2020 among other actions planned this year. Finally, we remain fully committed to ensuring that all of our working environment at our sites around the world are safe for our employees and supervised contractors.
Our safety performance has steadily been improving in recent years, but in 2019, some of our sites experienced increases in accidents rates as we transitioned into 1 company after our Frutarom acquisition. As part of our commitment to continuous improvement, we are strengthening our safety programs at all locations and continuing to work towards an accident free workplace by focusing on 3 main areas. First, governance, including comprehensive policies and procedures training, focused on extensive systems and shared To recap our progress on our sustainability strategy, I wanted to show you how these pillars are helping us do more good while creating both short and long term shareholder value. First, we are driving growth from within our sustainable innovation pillar. Nearly $2,000,000,000 of our customers are engaged and require that we uphold the sustainability initiatives and performance necessary to sustain inclusion on core lists and supplier scorecards as a trusted and ethical company with responsible products.
Next, we are cutting costs within our environmental pillar through triple bottom line eco efficiency and energy projects. We are not only managing our footprint, but reducing our reliance on critical natural resources and making our operations more cost efficient. For example, we have reduced absolute greenhouse gases by 5.7% from last year and began powering nearly 50% of our operations with clean, affordable, renewable electricity. 3rd, we are reducing supplier and ingredient risks through our responsible sourcing pillar, which is all about creating a more resilient supply chain and winning business with ethically produced hero ingredients like Patchouli and Fair For Life vanilla. We are achieving this by strengthening our supplier relationships and ingredient supply chain through systems, partners, certifications and industry first blockchain technology.
And last, our people and community pillar is all about being a responsible company that ultimately enhances our brand for current and potential employees as well as with investors and other stakeholders like you. Advancing a diverse and inclusive culture at IFF is critical. While we are so proud of our achievements thus far, it's in our company's DNA to have a constant eye toward improvement in every facet of our business, and this is no exception. Now I will turn it back to Andreas to give you a look ahead to what is in store for IFF.
Thank you, Kip. As you can see, we're very proud of our results, not only this year but over the past few years. As Chairman and CEO of IFF and as an Executive Committee member of the WBCSD, I know sustainability is continuing to advance, and at IFF, we intend to lead this effort. Put it simply, sustainability is a key enabler of our corporate strategy. In line with IFS' purpose of redefining how we live in and care for the resource of the world, we intend to focus on Our sustainability plays a part in the new normal after COVID-nineteen and how we can build back better.
Our passionate and dedicated team will continue to identify innovative, industry leading opportunities to update our processes with a focus on efficiency and sustainability. This crisis has showed us that the future of work may look different with more flexible schedules and more from home opportunities that improve work life balance and reduce pollution. We will evaluate our current protocols and infrastructure to effectively plan for a new future of work, something that every company has now been tasked as a result of the unprecedented situation. For instance, air travelers' high greenhouse gas emissions, Do we need to travel as much or can we save carbon and money through video calls? I also see increased transparency and disclosures as a key to productive stakeholder engagement.
We included an industry specific disclosure aligned with the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board, or SASB, in our sustainability report for the first time this year, and we will continue to do so in the future reporting cycles. We're also preparing to disclose our climate related risks in line with the recommendations of the task force on climate related financial disclosures, or TCFD, going forward. And lastly, we will continue to accelerate our sustainability programs as this company grows and evolves. With the completion of our announced merger with DuPont, we will require sustainability at the essence of everything we do. Now I would like to open up the floor to any questions that you might have.
We will start with e mail questions to Michael Dubow and then proceed to the queue. Michael?
Great. Thank you. So a couple of questions from an e mail perspective. Maybe to start the first one. What differentiates you in terms of sustainability within your industry?
Yes, Mike. Thank you for the question. First of all, we have started the journey for sustainability actually longer than 10 years ago. I think it's part of IFF's DNA since our origin. And we have pioneered a lot of things over the last couple of decades.
We had the 1st natural divisions division with LMR. We have installed the largest solar field and the 1st wind turbine just to name a couple of them. But what really differentiates us, I believe, is the circular design thinking. And you see that sustainability in our company in IFF is actually located in R and D because we believe whenever we come up with new solutions, new technologies, new molecules, we should have sustainability already in mind. And that makes it very, very different to many of the other companies.
Certainly, the creativity of our people plays an important role here as well. But these are the most important differentiators, I would say. We are certainly not perfect, but we always strive to improve for the people and for the planet. Mike?
Great. Thank you, Andres. 2nd question, how are you thinking about your sustainability strategy in the context of the N and B integration?
So that's a very important topic because the company is certainly becoming bigger. Our environmental footprint is becoming bigger as well. What we do at the moment is that we work very closely together, get a good inventory and make sure that we formulate all of our objectives going forward for the combined entity. But as you might have seen, we have already laid out the vision and the purpose. And in the purpose, it's clearly stated that sustainability will be a big part of what drives us as a new combined company forward.
But I would like to give it also to Kipp because Kipp, you are on the forefront of helping us to make sure that we integrate here in the right let's say, with the right objectives, but the right speed as well. Kipp, please add.
Yes. Thank you, Andreas. And today, it's business as usual for 2 separate companies, but we're really looking forward becoming that new global integrated solutions leader. And like you said, our purpose is about applying science and creativity for a better world, and it's going to push us past the traditional boundaries and to be a force for a better and more sustainable future. I'm really excited about this because I think the possibilities from a sustainability standpoint are unbounded.
As you said, we're going to continue to look at how we can build better, putting both our programs together and then coming out with something that is even more in line with our ambition to be a leader in taste and scent and nutrition and of course, sustainability to do more good.
Great. Maybe next question, just to keep moving forward. What is the status of the Frum integration in your sustainability strategy and metrics and goals?
Yes, can you take that?
Yes, absolutely. So as you saw 2019 marked the first full year of operation for Frutarom, and we've worked hard to include this new data as available. And what you'll see in our report is combined data for GHG emissions and other environmental metrics. The team really worked hard to kind of pull this all together very quickly for this year. And I'm pleased to say that we are still on track to meet our what I mentioned, our ECO effective plus 2025 goals.
We've also included some combined data for workforce figures and safety. And as promised, we'll fully report all the combined information in our 2020 Sustainability Report. We're excited to work with the legacy Food and Home sites and harness the incredible passion of our people. And the teams, like I said, have been working really hard in collaborating. We embrace the opportunity to have a real impact, share the learnings, share the best practices from both companies that are most meaningful to our colleagues and communities and customers.
Anytime when you bring 2 entities together, there are of course challenges and we're working through those challenges. But I also see a great opportunity that we can again shake these 2 companies and make them even more sustainable going forward.
Great. Thanks, Kip. Next question, are and will compensation be linked to sustainability?
Absolutely. So that's what we do already for a couple of years. I have it in my own objectives. Kipp has it obviously, certainly, Greg. Whoever can make an impact on sustainability has it in the objectives.
What we do, we have a Sustainability Business Council, and we define our goals and cascade them through the organization as objectives which are linked to performance and ultimately to compensation. And I think that's really important. And we do it now for the combined company with fruit, and we will do it then for the new combined company with NMBS as well. I actually believe you have to do it because if you don't link compensation, you probably will not have the impact you wish for.
Great. Thanks, Andreas. Next question maybe for directly Kipp and Greg. It's a question on the CDP and science based targets. The question is, how do you find using these frameworks?
Please expand a bit on the pros and cons.
Hey, Mike. Maybe I'll start off with that one and take it. So like you've seen in our report, we worked with both CDP and the science based targets. It was interesting, very interesting opportunity to kind of share what a science based target really looks like. There was a lot of discussions back and forth of how we set a target that is in line with the Paris Climate Agreement.
I think the process, just to be absolutely honest, has evolved over the last few years. We are ultimately happy with our science based target of the 30% absolute reduction as well as to work with 70% of the emissions of our suppliers. And CDP has made it very easy to be able to track and report on this. So overall, I think a very good opportunity. And then as we start to look forward to the 1.5 ambition, I know that the teams at CDP and SBTI are working on that and we'll be working with them to adjust our targets going forward.
Thanks, Kipp. Next question, probably have about 2 or 3 more from an email perspective. Discussions on sustainable raw materials tend to focus on naturals. To what extent do you think the synthetic raw materials will have a role to play?
I can take part of that.
You take it.
Greg, you're going. Yes.
I think as we look at a lot of especially what we do in R and D, natural raw materials and synthetic raw materials will still play a big role in a lot of our innovation. But we also when we consider how we make these raw materials, we have to consider how we can design these products with sustainability in mind. So for example, we look at green chemistry, we look at ways that we use solvents. We look at reduced waste discharge. We also look at things such as moving away from microplastics and a lot of what we do in a lot of our technologies.
So the synthetics as well as the nationals will play a big role in the future, but also today in a lot of what we do in sustainability.
If I might add, so I believe synthetics have to play a role, as Greg said, and they're not always bad materials. I think it always depends how they are basically put into the circular design in general. And I just want to tell everybody that in particular, when one of the reasons for the NNB merger acquisition was also the biotech capabilities we will have from next year onwards, which will help us a lot to help the with a sustainable supply chain for many of these materials and come up with very, very innovative solutions. So all in all, syntheticsware will play a role, but we're banking on biotech solutions going forward as well, and that was one of the reasons going forward with our transaction.
Thanks, Andreas. Maybe to build on that, the next question we have is, to what extent are you backward integrated into certain raw materials?
Kipp or Greg?
Yes, I'll take a little bit of that and I'll turn it over to Kipp. I think in a lot of our raw materials, for example, in our naturals, we work well with the farmers that are vertically integrated, such as vanilla, vetiver and things like that. We also, as Andreas mentioned, we use raw materials to make other raw materials, such as in biotech and such as in some of our synthetic chemistry as we move forward. So as we look at what the world can supply and the earth can supply and what we can make, we then make decisions how we backward integrate some of these raw materials as we move forward.
Gipp, I don't know if you have anything to add. Yes, yes. Let me add a little bit on to that, especially on the natural side. And we feel it's really important to have transparency and traceability all the way to the farm level. We want to make sure that the farmers, the smallholder farmers that we're working with that we understand their needs, they understand our needs.
And you can see this in some of our initiatives, especially with, Zadivir from Haiti. We work directly with those farmers, with the suppliers all the way through, to our customers. And, I'm happy to say that what has really kind of excelled this is the new blockchain technology that we have piloted, both on Blackcurrant Bud and now expanding to vanilla. So, a very important part going forward and really all about traceability and transparency throughout the supply chain.
Great. Thanks, Kipp. I think from an email perspective, we're all good. So maybe I'll turn it over back to the operator for any live questions that came in.
And we'll take our first question from Mark Estrachan with Stifel. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yes. Hey, good morning, everybody.
Hey, Mark.
I guess the question I have would be kind of thinking about the COVID impact on all that you're doing here. And maybe if you can tie it in without giving an update on business, but talk about how that plays through on previous commentary about weaker 2Q sales and softer 2Q sales and higher costs and kind of how you think about balancing all of that on a go forward basis should some of this COVID impact sustain?
Okay. So Mark, I take it and thank you for the question. So first of all, all the efforts we're doing on sustainability will stay even in the COVID times because we believe it's super important to do it. And it has not to be always a more costly exercise. On a sustainable company, certainly, what we do as many other companies, we make sure that we keep our essential workers safe in our plants and facilitate work from home opportunities.
And I have to say, I'm very proud that all of our 110 manufacturing plants are fully operational, and we didn't lose any of them. All of our creative centers are working. We have found ways to in a sustainable way actually to keep them open. We have very low impact on COVID in terms of that our employees are becoming patients. And it shows that our measures seems to work.
So I take this as a keep the operations sustainable as well. Certainly, as I said, we keep our commitments on the climate crisis and all the other sustainability programs here as well. Talking about higher costs, and I think, Mark, that's an important one. And I just discussed it with our executive committee, what do we do if this world stays for the next, let's say, 24 months as it is because we have no vaccine, we have no real cure. So we have to make sure even in the midterm that we can manage the situation, and I believe we can.
So we have good plans to react to our customers' projects because we see in many instances that the load of projects for our creative centers is going up again, which is a very, very good sign. It means that many of our customers are going back to normal. We have to make sure that we look how we can sustain our workforce in a way we do it right now with working from home, doing shifts in the different shifts in the manufacturing plants, but in the creative centers as well that we really can deal and cope with the workload we are having there. But we are looking and that might be something interesting for our footprint as well. Do we need the footprint in terms of offices we have right now?
Or can we basically reduce our footprint, have different setups and how do we organize ourselves. I probably can give you, Mark, a bit of a better take later the year because we started the project, we call it the future of work, and we took the COVID crisis actually as a reason to look into this much more in detail and what can we do in terms of digitalization in manufacturing, in R and D, but in other areas of our company as well, which means that this probably will help us to save costs as well. And I don't have to tell you that our travel costs are significantly down. And I give you one small example, which we will continue after we are back to the new normal. I just did my Asia business review, which was actually planned as a trip of 2.5 weeks.
We did it virtually. It worked fine. And even in the future, I probably don't have to go twice to Asia. I do it once. It saves a tremendous amount of cost and time as well.
And if you cascade this down to other parts of the organization, it's a tremendous savings opportunity. So what I try to say is that with the savings we will have with the new way we want to work, we certainly can balance some of the higher costs we have in manufacturing or in the labs because we have to cope with social distancing and other measures here as well. But more to come on it, but I'm fairly optimistic that this is actually a good drive for us to come up with new ways to work and our processes are we are now streamlining quite significantly as well and that will cut off some costs as well. So I hope that helps for now.
We'll go next to John Roberts with UBS. Please go ahead. Thank you. I believe you have a natural biotech process to make ethylvanilin. Are there any now with the new biotech capabilities you're getting with DuPont N and B, are there any other significant target molecules that you might convert from synthetic to natural?
John, very, very good question. I give this to Greg, please.
Yes. I mean, right now, we because of the possible new capabilities that we'll be having next year, we're looking at very key targets in our percent division. So as you look at and not only do we look at final targets, but we look at intermediates and raw materials utilizing this biotech piece of it. So right now, we're on the evaluation and planning stage of looking at some targets that are a possibility. Some of them we may currently biotech right now, so we would shift some of those resources into that further next year.
And then we look at all stages of that stream. In the flavor industry, we're doing the same thing beyond vanilla and vanillin, some key areas there too that we believe will make a remarkable difference in the way we formulate. So right now, we're in the evaluation stage. And later on down this year, we'll be able to probably set some projects in mind that we believe will be well worth it and get that return on that investment.
And it does appear we have no further questions. I'll return the floor to Andreas Phibig for closing remarks.
Thank you very much, first of all, to be on our first sustainability call for investors and analysts. I hope it was valuable for you to see what we are doing as a company, as IFF. And if this is something which has a good resonance with many of you, I think we will repeat it as next year as soon as we have the next report. And certainly, more to come when we go together with the NMB DuPont division because, as I said, it's a much bigger fish. It's a much bigger pie we can play with and footprint and have more impact on what we are doing in general.
So thank you very much, and thank you for the questions, and talk to you soon. Bye bye. Thank you. Thank you.
And this will conclude today's program. Thanks for your participation. You may now disconnect.