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Transformation with Impact
Interview with Dr Jean‑Yves Parisot, CEO Symrise AG
Symrise is executing its strategy with discipline, and the ONE SYM Transformation program is already delivering significant results. Portfolio realignment, innovation ecosystem implementation, efficiency initiatives, and customer centric organizational improvements are structurally strengthening the company’s competitiveness. As CEO Dr Jean‑Yves Parisot explains in this interview, these measures are creating a solid foundation for durable, profitable growth in the years ahead.
Dr Parisot, what were the most important achievements for Symrise in 2025? I want to start with our people. Across regions, functions, and businesses, our teams showed exceptional commitment, expertise, and ownership—embracing change and driving it forward. That matters, because in 2025, we translated the ONE Symrise strategy into concrete actions enabled by the ONE SYM Transformation program. The commitment from our teams to deliver solutions for our customers on a day-to-day basis played an equally decisive role in our business performance. Even in a challenging market environment, we generated solid organic sales growth and continued to improve our profitability. Our legacy businesses in particular, continued to perform well: Food & Beverages maintained industry-leading growth and profitability, and Fragrance was again among the market’s top performers. Also, we further extended our leadership in Naturals. At the same time, focused execution, cost savings and efficiency gains translated into record-high business free cash flow for the full year, further strengthening our financial flexibility through disciplined capital allocation. We are exiting 2025 stronger than when we entered it; we are more focused, more capable, and structurally more competitive.
How did you translate the ONE Symrise Strategy and the ONE SYM Transformation program into concrete actions and results in 2025? ONE Symrise is our purpose-driven strategy comprising our three core pillars: Portfolio, Growth and Efficiency. This strategy, which is anchored by a clear view of “Where to Play” and “How to Win,” ensures that we deploy our resources where Symrise can generate the greatest impact—for our customers, people and shareholders. The ONE SYM Transformation program is a multi-year, organization-wide change program designed to enable the execution of this strategy through profitable growth, high returns and long-term durable value creation. It will enable us to better execute our strategy, with the goal of creating the Symrise of the future—a more durable, profitable and returns-oriented organization.
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We are exiting 2025 stronger than we entered it.
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Looking at the ONE SYM Transformation program in detail, what were the most important actions taken and milestones reached? As just mentioned, the ONE SYM Transformation program is about enabling execution of our strategy. We sharpened our portfolio in 2025 by completing the divestment of the Aqua Feed business and preparing for the divestment of Terpene Ingredients to focus our capital on higher-return opportunities. In addition, we evolved the ONE Care project by establishing a new division within Scent & Care, called Care & Wellness, which went live on January 1st, 2026. When it comes to the Growth pillar, we expanded innovation and production capacities to meet demand in key markets, including Grasse, Granada, Monterrey and Holzminden, ensuring we remain close to our customers and resilient in supply. At the same time, we laid the foundation for a stronger, even more customer-centric approach by increasingly integrating our digital capabilities into daily operations, refining our routes to market and initiating the implementation of a company-wide innovation ecosystem. And finally, the most visible impact was in the Efficiency pillar, where we delivered structural cost savings and efficiency gains of approximately EUR 50 million, following the EUR 50 million achieved in full year 2024. Together, these measures will enable our self-help story to compound over time and will reinforce our ability to create value.
You mentioned efficiency as the most visible lever. What role did it play last year? The savings generated in 2024 and 2025 are structural improvements, not one‑time gains. A significant portion of the freed‑up resources was strategically reinvested into our business across innovation, digitalization, and commercial efforts. In doing so, we are linking near‑term savings and efficiency gains with durable improvements in our economic performance. This operating leverage increases our future competitive position in a sustainable way.
2.8%
Organic sales growth
Where exactly did you become more efficient? As part of our ongoing transformation program, we are achieving efficiency gains across several key areas. Over the past two years, we established global procurement and operations functions to drive scale benefits and asset optimization, while preserving customer-centricity and the entrepreneurial focus that differentiates our specialized businesses. We are also systematically strengthening collaboration across segments and divisions. On the execution side, we captured EUR 35 million through sourcing and procurement scale, supported by a more global approach and a structured evaluation of key raw materials for efficiencies such as citrus. Productivity and capacity optimization added EUR 10 million. Global asset and logistics management actions, including facility optimization, the renegotiation of distribution contracts and regional logistics tenders, contributed another EUR 5 million. Together, these initiatives are driving substantial cost savings and efficiency gains to expand margins and fuel growth.
How has the strategy shown up in the financial results? You can see the step‑up in the quality of our earnings. Even in a challenging market environment, we consistently expanded our adjusted operating EBITDA margin, up from 19.1% in 2023 to 20.7% in 2024 and 21.9% in 2025. This is not a short‑term effect but reflects the structural improvements we have made thanks to our strategic focus. We also achieved 2.8% organic sales growth in 2025; in Flavor and Fragrance, organic sales growth was significantly higher than the corresponding market growth rate. The improvement of our financial figures supported earnings per share of EUR 3.67 as well as our proposal to increase the dividend to EUR 1.25 per share. Overall, the numbers show a clear picture: our actions are structurally improving our growth and building a resilient foundation for sustained profitability.
Growth was more moderate than in previous years. How do you handle this? Market conditions softened noticeably over the course of the year, affecting customers, competitors, and us alike. Against this backdrop, we focused on what we could control: execution, efficiency, cash discipline, and strategic actions. And we did it successfully. For full year 2025, we achieved a satisfying organic sales growth and meaningful margin expansion, despite a lower-volume operating environment. Our ONE Symrise strategy and ONE SYM Transformation program are enabling us to manage short-term volatility while further strengthening long-term resilience.
How will the ONE SYM Transformation program evolve in 2026? Due to the continued challenging environment, we have decided to accelerate our efforts with targeted measures to enhance our competitiveness. Accordingly, we are deepening our push in four focus areas. First, drive commercial excellence, as we are improving processes and tools based on sales and marketing best practices. Second, we are delivering differentiated innovation by further leveraging our innovation ecosystem and partnerships. Third, across our supply chain, industrial footprint, and sourcing and procurement, continue realizing scale benefits. And fourth, in parallel, we are accelerating digitalization, including the use of AI, to streamline processes and increase speed to market. We are funding these measures through cost savings and efficiency gains generated by the additional acceleration of our efficiency programs across the organization. This will form the foundation of our new Symrise operating model, which will enhance our competitiveness.
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Due to the continued challenging environment, we have decided to accelerate our efforts with targeted measures to enhance our competitiveness.
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So, you consider Symrise to be well positioned? Absolutely. Symrise is a strategically well‑positioned company with a diverse portfolio and specific business models across the value chain and across regions. We secure key raw materials for the long term, and we operate close to our customers, on both a local and global scale. Parts of our portfolio address fundamental needs, which enhances business resilience. This strong foundation enables us to maintain resilience through economic cycles and capture opportunities, even in challenging phases. This applies especially as we execute the ONE Symrise strategy which focuses on businesses sustained by robust, growing underlying markets.
Let’s look at the segments: how did Taste, Nutrition & Health (TN&H) perform? We saw strong performance in TN&H. The segment delivered 2.6% organic sales growth with sales of EUR 3.0 billion. Food & Beverages continued its positive trajectory, achieving mid‑single‑digit organic growth with industry‑leading profitability, driven particularly by Europe, the Middle East and Africa and North America. Within the beverage business unit, non‑alcoholic beverages were a key growth driver, with high single‑digit gains. And we further expanded our leadership in Naturals and Savory. We also had very tangible successes: in China, we saw strong double‑digit growth in citrus and citrus alternatives for beverages; in Savory, dynamic momentum in snack seasonings. Pet Food delivered stable overall results. Strategic price adjustments early in the year supported sales in Pet Nutrition. Regionally, Europe, the Middle East and Africa grew slightly and Latin America delivered double‑digit growth, with softer results in North America and Asia/Pacific. At the same time, we divested the Aqua Feed business to sharpen our focus even further on our core activities.
And how did Scent and Care perform over the year? Scent & Care delivered solid performance overall, generating sales of EUR 1.9 billion with organic sales growth of 3.2%. Growth was primarily driven by our fragrance activities: both Fine Fragrances and Consumer Fragrances recorded strong sales increases—particularly in North and Latin America for Fine Fragrances, and in Asia/Pacific as well as Europe, the Middle East and Africa for Consumer Fragrances. New customer projects and a strong opportunity pipeline contributed substantially to this momentum. Aroma Molecules faced more muted dynamics due to intense competition from Asia and a dynamic market environment. Cosmetic Ingredients came in slightly below the prior year due to strong comparatives, especially in UV Filters, while Micro Protection continued to grow steadily. Strategically, we completed multi‑year capacity expansions in Spain and India, and opened our new Fragrance Campus in Grasse, deepening access to high‑growth customers in the Middle East and Africa. We also advanced preparations for the divestment of our Terpenes business, which we plan to complete in 2026. Overall, profitability improvement outpaced sales, a clear indication that our efficiency measures are working.
Adjusted operation EBITDA margin
19.1%
(2023)
20.7%
(2024)
21.9%
(2025)
Sustainability has long been a Symrise hallmark. How are you advancing it? Over the years, we have embedded sustainability from end‑to‑end, from responsible sourcing and production up to our final products. We measure progress against clearly defined environmental, social, and innovation KPIs. With our strengthened Sustainability organization, we put equal emphasis on ambition and execution: “walking the talk.” The recognitions we received in 2025 confirm we are on the right track. Sustainability forms an integral part of our competitiveness and our ability to sustain strong performance over time.
Innovation is also critical for Symrise to drive growth and help lead the market. How are you strengthening the company’s innovation capabilities? We are further optimizing our Group‑wide innovation ecosystem to bring new, consumer‑relevant solutions and services to market in a faster way. We are also enhancing cross-business connectivity. By linking expertise more intelligently, we simultaneously increase efficiency and innovation power. We are also strengthening individual accountability and embedding a day‑to‑day readiness to embrace change. In a global company with thousands of team members, we are talking about a continuous improvement process, one that benefits enormously from the breadth of experience within our teams, advancing our people and strengthening the company.
What role does AI play in shaping the next phase of Symrise’s growth? As the most critical enabler, AI is the area where I am focusing the most for the time being. The targeted use of artificial intelligence to complement the deep expertise of our people is a central priority for us. That combination is incredibly powerful. To accelerate this, we are strengthening our internal capabilities and further developing AI solutions tailored to our needs, including the launch of a global Data and AI Hub in Barcelona to significantly advance our digital capabilities. We intend to apply AI more extensively in customer briefings, procurement, and product development. To do so, for example, we are expanding our proprietary Symvision AI™ platform, which sets new standards in science based innovation. It brings together advanced machine learning capabilities with the experience of our teams, enabling us to develop formulations faster and with greater precision. For our customers, this means shorter development cycles and solutions that better reflect regulatory and ingredient-specific requirements, ultimately increasing the probability of successful product launches. Our digitalization strategy, and especially our AI strategy, will become a decisive lever for innovation speed and competitiveness across all areas of the company.
You spoke about stronger synergies across the Group. Can you give an example? We are aligning our portfolio around differentiated, science‑based solutions. For example, at the convergence of beauty and health: as of 2026, we have established the Care & Wellness division within Scent & Care, combining our expertise in Cosmetic Ingredients, Health Active Solutions, and Probiotics. This integrated platform addresses evolving customer and consumer needs and targets an extremely fast growing market. We expect Care & Wellness to generate over EUR 500 million in sales this year.
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We are aligning our portfolio decisively around differentiated, science-based solutions.
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Looking ahead, how do you view the outlook? Our ONE Symrise strategy focuses on controlling the controllables, even with a continued dynamic operating environment. We are systematically optimizing structures, processes, investment decisions, and our daily operations. Our 2025 performance demonstrated both the strength of our market position and the traction of our transformation. We can now further enhance our competitiveness with conviction over the coming years.
Looking ahead to full year 2026, we expect organic sales growth between 2% and 4%, an adjusted EBITDA margin of 21.5% to 22.5%, and a Business Free Cash Flow margin of above 14%. And let me emphasize one point once more: none of the progress achieved in recent months would have been possible without the expertise and dedication of our Symrisers worldwide. I would like to extend my sincere thanks to all of them. Their daily contribution is the foundation of our success and gives me great confidence in our company’s future and ability to drive durable, profitable growth.
