I heard there is a "Biodiversity and Sustainable Ingredients department" at L'Occitane, can you tell me more about it?
Our Biodiversity and Sustainable Ingredients department is in charge of key ingredients. The team is made up of agronomists who secure long-term, high-quality supply chains to provide plant ingredients for the L’OCCITANE Group, in line with four principles: local, sustainability, traceability and equity. The members of the team work directly with producers, forging long-lasting partnerships built on trust.
Their role involves:
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suggesting innovative and responsible ingredients
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ensuring that we protect biodiversity: we extract the very best active ingredients while protecting the natural heritage of our regions, we carry out biodiversity diagnosis.
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supporting family farms and helping them develop and protect our local regions
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guaranteeing the QUALITY, TRACEABILITY, SAFETY and SUSTAINABILITY of STRATEGIC INGREDIENTS.
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We work directly with producers to provide more added value for the producer and have control over traceability. We focus on the continuous improvement of the supply chain that provides natural extracts and plants. We work to establish a long-term commitment, based on trust and respect.
Can you tell us why it is so unique to have a team of agricultural engineers dedicated to L'Occitane?
What makes your Biodiversity and Sustainable Ingredients team unique?
Our Biodiversity and Sustainable Ingredients team is unique as we have five agricultural engineers in our R&D department who work together with the different R&D departments and the purchasing, procurement, quality and CSR departments. They help our R&D department to innovate responsibly and secure the provision of our raw materials, thanks to the good relationship that we maintain with our producers.
There are several things that make us different from competing brands :
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We work directly with stakeholders and regional players: over 200 missions in the field per year. Our close partnership with producers is quite unique. We know all the plots of land used to make our products. This enables us to have complete control over the traceability of our key ingredients.
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We are strongly anchored in the region.
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All our key ingredients can be traced back to the source
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We are dedicated to sustainably developing our supply chains.
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We monitor our impact on biodiversity and work to protect it.
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We actively contribute to new innovations.