Stakeholder Engagement 

As a responsible member of society, CSM maintains an open and honest dialogue with all stakeholders who are interested in the company and its business operations. Listening to others and learning from our stakeholders informs our decision-making, strengthens our relationships and helps us deliver our commitments and succeed as a business. We seek common ground with stakeholders to enable us to integrate sustainability across all business solutions.

Investors
CSM manages an ongoing investor relations program to ensure that all potential investors and analysts have access to the latest information on company developments. CSM attaches great value to good relations with its shareholders and recognizes the importance of good corporate governance. It is committed to achieving the highest standards within its policies.

Employees
Our CSM Works Councils across Europe and local employee representatives play an important role in supporting the business by participating in dialogues that have added value to both our people and our customers. We engage with employees on sustainability. We launched our Sustainable Value initiative to strengthen our momentum in driving Sustainability at CSM. This global initiative involved interviews and workshops with cross-functional representation over all divisions. We also conduct a variety of internal communications, such as a sustainability blog and webinars. Further, employees were encouraged to consider their own impacts using the WWF personal footprint calculator. These initiatives helped employees to better understand sustainability in general as well as how sustainability adds value to our company, our external stakeholders, our customers and society.

Partnerships
Top Institute Food & Nutrition, TIFN, is a joint initiative of the Dutch government, the food industry, universities and research institutes. It is part of the "Food Valley" initiative to strengthen the innovative and competitive capabilities of the food industry. It conducts long-term strategic and fundamental research into the development of innovative, new healthy food. CSM participates in TIFN together with other industrial partners, including DSM, Unilever, Vion, Friesland Campina. Research is organized on a project basis and performed at various locations of the participating organizations.

ICOS Cleantech Fund I and II are venture funds that are investing in early technology start-ups based in the Netherlands, in partnership with Delft University of Technology. They focus on new technologies that promote sustainability and the environment such as sustainable life cycle technologies. CSM actively participates in the fund's Investment Board, together with fund managers ICOS Capital, Imtech and Royal BAM Group, to gain insight into the new ideas developing in the Dutch market and which help increase the success rate of the fund.

Fedima, the Federation of the European Union Manufacturers and Suppliers of Ingredients to the Bakery, Confectionery and Patisserie Industries, runs working groups on sustainability which are co-chaired by CSM. It is Fedima's task to provide active guidance and support in sustainability matters to its member organizations and other companies. CSM played a leading role to develop a Carbon measuring and reporting tool consistent with the Green House Gas Protocol for its members to use. This year, a new working group is being launched to focus on waste and packaging. Other topics high on the agenda are verification and taxation systems.

Purac is a partner of BE-Basic. This public-private partnership is coordinated by the Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands. This organization supports the development of clean, robust and competitive biobased chemicals, materials and energy industries, including the responsible monitoring and control of healthy soil and water environments, based on the advanced genomics technologies and bioprocess engineering. BE-Basic unifies the capabilities of Dutch and international world-class universities, institutes and advanced industries of various sizes. We actively participate in two working groups of BE-Basic, first in the development of processes to produce fermentable sugars from ligno-cellulosic substrates for the production of organic acids. Second, we participate in a working group to address the social embedding of a biobased society.

Purac is participating in a study for TEEB (The Economics of Ecosystems Service and Biodiversity), a major international initiative to draw attention to the global economic benefits of biodiversity and highlight the growing costs of biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation. A first assessment on the dependence and impacts on ecosystem services including risks and opportunities, bio-based programs and bio-plastics were assessed as feasible opportunity for the chemicals sector. With the project "TEEB for the Netherlands" the Netherlands government is analyzing, in cooperation with Purac, the economic value of biodiversity and ecosystem services for the chemical sector by looking at various alternatives for the production of PLA (polylactic acid). The comparison is about PLA production from traditional food grade substrates versus alternative substrates. Purac is used as an example in the economic top sector chemistry as defined by the Dutch Ministry of Economy, Agriculture and Innovation.

Bakery Supplies North America provides partnership support to the United States Compliance Corporation. This program develops site-specific hazard and risk assessments to avoid internal and external safety threats.

Bakery Supplies North America (BSNA) provides partnership support to the March of Dimes, Feeding America, Red Cross, and the Salvation Army. The March of Dimes strongly promotes folic acid as a main contributor to a healthy pregnancy, and BSNA includes folic acid in a portion of its products. Feeding America is a food bank organization, and as BSNA is in the food industry, this directly compliments the mission of collecting food for the needy. BSNA employees believe in giving back to the community, for example, we regularly hold blood drives for the Red Cross and donate to the Salvation Army for National Donut Day.

CSM has been an RSPO, Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, member since 2005. The RSPO is a multi-stakeholder initiative dedicated to promoting sustainable production of palm oil worldwide. The RSPO has more than 700 members including palm growers, oil processors, traders, consumer goods manufacturers, retailers, investors and social and environmental NGO's. The RSPO promotes the growth and use of sustainable palm oil through co-operation within the supply chain and open dialogue with its stakeholders.  Its mission is to advance the production, procurement and use of sustainable oil palm products through the development, implementation and verification of credible global standards and the engagement of stakeholders along the supply chain.

In 2012, CSM has become a member of Bonsucro, a global multi-stakeholder non-profit initiative dedicated to reducing the environmental and social impacts of sugar cane production. It aims to achieve this with a Standard that measures these impacts accurately, and with the development of a system to certify that sustainable practices are being adhered to.