ASD Member Profile: Gattefossé: ‘We have a better leverage today and much more visibility in the palm oil industry because of ASD’

Laurent Schubnel, Group CSR Leader at Gattefossé

Sourcing palm-derived ingredients responsibly remains a complex and evolving challenge, particularly for companies working with derivatives deep within global value chains. Improving transparency, strengthening due diligence, and building collective leverage are all essential to driving meaningful progress. 

In this ASD Member Profile, we speak with Laurent Schubnel, Group CSR Leader at Gattefossé, about his journey into sustainability, the realities of palm sourcing, and how collaboration through ASD is helping the industry move forward.

Can you briefly introduce yourself and tell us what you do at Gattefossé?

I am the Group Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Leader at Gattefossé. I have held this position for the past five years, and I have been with the company for over 25 years. In my current role, I am responsible for shaping and leading the company’s CSR strategy across the entire business.

For readers who may not know Gattefossé, what does the company do?

We develop, produce, and market specialty ingredients for the personal care and pharmaceutical industries. Our activities are structured around two main areas. The first is plant-based engineering, where we develop active ingredients for personal care applications. The second is oleochemistry, where we design functional ingredients such as sensory emulsifiers as well as excipients for the pharmaceutical sector.

Take us back to the early part of your career. How did you get into sustainability?

It’s a long story. When I joined the company over 25 years ago, I started as a technical support engineer. I was working closely with our customers, supporting them on product-related questions, explaining our technologies, and providing technical guidance.

Over time, I began to see a clear shift – both in customer expectations and in the company’s strategic direction – towards greater traceability and stronger environmental considerations. As a result, my role gradually evolved, with more focus on topics such as naturality and responsible sourcing.

This shift also strongly resonated with my personal values. While Gattefossé had already been active on many of these topics for several years, there was a need for stronger coordination and structure. Taking on the role of Group CSR Leader allowed me to bring these initiatives together and to help build a more structured and strategic CSR roadmap at group level.

Sourcing any kind of agricultural commodity is not easy. Right now, what are the big challenges you face when it comes to sourcing more responsibly?

One of the main raw materials we use across the group is palm oil, or more precisely its derivatives, which are widely used in many of our products. It is a commodity with a very complex and fragmented value chain.

Back in 2013, we became RSPO certified. However, at that time, we still had very limited visibility over the actual origin of the palm oil entering our supply chain, and very few levers to ensure traceability or conduct meaningful due diligence.

This is one of the key reasons why we joined ASD in 2019. Through ASD, we are now able to significantly improve our transparency. While it remains challenging to trace every single kilogram, we can now identify the mills, refineries, and in many cases the plantations involved in our supply chain. This gives us much better visibility and enables us to manage risks and drive improvements on this critical feedstock.

What makes ASD different from other industry collaborations?

The first differentiating factor is the level of expertise. ASD has been instrumental in helping us better structure our due diligence approach—from defining clear policies to developing relevant KPIs and performance indicators. It has also given us a much deeper understanding of the palm oil value chain.

The second key aspect is the strength of the collaboration itself. ASD brings companies together around a shared objective: making the entire value chain more sustainable. This collective approach creates strong momentum, and we continuously learn from one another.

Finally, ASD has given a stronger voice to the personal care and oleochemical sectors within the palm oil industry. As part of this collective, we are better heard, we gain more visibility, and we have greater leverage to engage stakeholders and drive meaningful improvements.

So, if you look five years ahead then, Laurent, what does ‘good’ look like? What would success look like for the sustainable palm derivatives market?

In five years’ time, I would be very pleased to see a significant increase in the Deforestation- and Conversion-Free (DCF) indicator across all ASD members. This would mean that our supply chains are no longer linked to deforestation, which would represent a major shift compared to the past.

We have already made strong progress in terms of transparency. Five years ago, we had around 70% visibility at mill level. Today, our volumes have increased fourfold, and we have reached approximately 95% visibility to mills. This demonstrates that it is possible to combine business growth with a much higher level of supply chain transparency.

What would you say to companies considering joining ASD?

You will learn a great deal. Joining ASD helps you better understand your value chain and the associated risks. It also provides clear guidance on the types of policies you need to develop, the procedures to implement, and the key indicators required to gain meaningful visibility.

Year after year, being part of ASD supports continuous improvement, helping companies make their entire supply chain more responsible and more resilient.

ASD also gives access to highly valuable tools that would be difficult to leverage individually, such as the Nusantara Atlas. This tool, for example, allows us to select the mills within our supply chain and allows us to assess whether they are linked to deforestation. It enables us not only to visualize these risks, but also to quantify them, making our due diligence far more robust and actionable.

Finally, and more broadly, what’s next for you at Gattefossé in terms of your CSR journey? What’s keeping you up at night?

Going forward, our priority is to extend our impact analysis across all our sourcing – not only palm derivatives. We use a wide range of plant-based raw materials for our active ingredients, and while we already have a clear understanding of where these plants are grown and by whom, we want to go further.

We are currently implementing new traceability tools that will apply not only to palm derivatives but to all our plant-based supply chains. At the same time, we are expanding our due diligence processes, building on everything we have learned through ASD.

What keeps me most engaged today is the challenge of scaling up this approach –ensuring that we maintain the same level of rigor, transparency, and impact across an increasingly complex and diverse sourcing base.