Innovation

Innovation being one of the four pillars of LDC’s transformational strategy, we continue to embrace and invest in innovative products, solutions, processes and technologies with the potential to disrupt our industry, reinforce our commercial offer and relationships, increase operational efficiency throughout our value chain, and contribute to low-carbon food and agricultural production.

In 2022, LDC created its new Plant Proteins business to help meet growing demand for plant-based protein alternatives that are tasty, nutritious, healthy and affordable. Our goal is to offer global customers a multi-purpose portfolio of plant-based proteins ingredients and premixed solutions that meet a wide range of applications. We inaugurated a research and development (R&D) facility in California’s San Francisco Bay Area, US, as a key foundation in the development of high-quality products. We entered the market with a first range of non-GMO plant protein isolates with an initial focus on North America, aiming ultimately at an international offering for customers around the globe.   

Our established platforms are also investing in R&D to diversify revenue streams through a broader portfolio of value-added products and solutions. For example, as a result of a five-year research effort in Bebedouro, São Paulo State, Brazil, LDC successfully developed a new product made from not-from-concentrate (NFC) orange juice, using an innovative enzymatic process to reduce natural sugar content by up to 30% and more than triple natural dietary fiber, while maintaining original taste and level of vitamin C.

We are also seeking to diversify revenue by transforming existing agri-commodity raw materials and their derivatives into products that respond to evolving market trends, including growing demand for more sustainable energy products. For example, we worked with a partner at our facility in Timbúes, Argentina, to recover oil from primary processing by-products for use as a third-generation biodiesel feedstock.  

In parallel, we are also investing in technology-enabled innovations that reinforce insights and analytics supporting commercial decision-making, offer new services to both suppliers and customers, enhance operational agility and safety, and contribute to supply chain efficiency and transparency.

For example, among the many initiatives that form part of our digitalization journey, in 2022 we advanced in the deployment of blockchain technology for more efficient post-trade operations via Covantis S.A., which expanded to North America, and our Grains & Oilseeds Platform invested in Grão Direto, one of Latin America’s largest digital grain trading platforms, with the potential to bring greater agility, security and accessibility to the grains value chain, being open to grain buyers and sellers of any size and reach.

We believe innovation is also key to preparing LDC for the future – for example in terms of decarbonization, including in shipping. Among other Freight initiatives in 2022, aiming to improve vessel efficiency and reduce emissions, we ran a successful biofuel trial on LDC’s first carbon neutral juice shipment between Belgium and Brazil.

We also continue to embrace innovation with the potential to disrupt our industry, complement our business and help shape fair, sustainable and transparent value chains.

In this sense, in 2022 our corporate venture capital program, Louis Dreyfus Company Ventures, continued to invest in startups developing a wide range of innovative ideas, solutions and technologies with the potential to transform food and agricultural production, such as ProfilePrint, using AI to develop sensory profiles for green coffee and other foods, and Algama, a platform for discovering and commercializing novel functional ingredients from microalgae.

In the delivery of our important company mission, as in the pursuit of our long-term growth strategy, we will continue to explore and embrace innovation for efficiency, transparency, commercial and operational insight, product and service offer enhancements and, ultimately, fair and sustainable value creation for LDC and our many partners and stakeholders worldwide.