Climate change accelerates and impacts agricultural and economic outlooks. Symrise addresses climate adaptation with sustainable solutions for increasing resilience towards existing and future climate change challenges. And even captures it in a scent.

Pressing climate risks

The immediate reality of climate change is impacting businesses, economies, and societies worldwide. This makes adaptation to the effects of climate change necessary. Climate-related regulations too are increasing compliance needs for businesses.

Symrise wants to better understand the consequences of climate change for businesses and society. Also, it wants to help develop adaptation strategies that protect businesses, economies and societies. In this context, the company took part in Europe’s first corporate climate adaptation conference “The Shift” in Berlin beginning of November. Experts and key opinion leaders from corporates, universities and politics attended. They exchanged on possible solutions and important next steps as global cooperation and collective innovation are called for. The event facilitated collaboration, knowledge-sharing, and partnerships across industries and borders.

Symrise presented climate adaptation in action

Increasing resilience and contributing to climate adaptation has formed a core mindset for Symrise for many years and will continue to do so. Symrise presented this approach to the audience of a special workshop. Dirk Neudorf, Senior Global Marketing Manager at Symrise, showed examples of effective risk mitigation and climate adaptation within the Symrise supply chain. By training and enforcing environmentally friendly farming practices, Symrise globally contributes to safeguarding ecosystems, improving soil health, and reducing the carbon footprint of agricultural production in a variety of projects.

Building partnerships for scalable solutions

Symrise recognizes that scaling climate adaptation processes requires collaboration across the entire value chain. By partnering with farmers, food manufacturers, and local stakeholders, Symrise is driving systemic change that benefits both the planet and business outcomes. In working directly with a broad range of stakeholders, Symrise offers a bridge, helping both sides advance sustainability goals and adapt to current and future climate changes.

Collaborating with farmers for tangible impact

Symrise’s global team works hand in hand with farmers across the world, implementing regenerative farming techniques such as crop rotation, cover cropping, and soil carbon sequestration. For example, in France, Symrise collaborates with carrot farmers to enhance soil fertility as well as water and biodiversity conservation. In Madagascar, the company's vanilla project employs shadow management techniques to protect crops by reducing soil erosion and enhancing soil stability in a holistic approach to sustainability. These measures aim at empowering farmers to adopt more eco-friendly practices. They learn how to implement crop rotation, use service plants, and incorporate dead cover crops. Also, these measures are supporting the living and working conditions of the farmers, for example with the “Bridging the Gap” initiative.

What scent does climate adaptation carry?

Symrise fragrance experts managed to encapsulate the positive aspects of its sustainability activities into a scent for a candle. The sustainably certified raw materials from Madagascar symbolize the positivity and importance of climate adaptation actions. This made the topic more tangible for the audience of THE SHIFT conference and sparked a lively discussion among the workshop attendees. It also served as a symbol for the importance of creating more awareness for the need of climate adaptation measures, such as in the global projects for enhanced sustainability of Symrise.