A message from our Managing Director & CEO
At Nufarm, we continue to play a role in accelerating plant science and technology to protect crops, increase yields and help the world grow enough affordable food, feed, fuel and fibre.
As we look ahead to 2025, the challenges and opportunities facing global agriculture have never been clearer—or more urgent. Globally, 2023 was the warmest year on record according to NASA, and the increase in extreme heat events, along with the intensity of heavy rainfall events bring challenges to the entire agriculture and food industry.
In FY24, we refreshed our materiality study, emerging with a set of five topics that are critical to our operations and that we have an impact on. These topics will guide our sustainability efforts across the group and help us address the challenges the industry faces.
A key tenet of our philosophy at Nufarm is that these challenges cannot be faced alone. Partnerships across industry are critical so that collective action can have meaningful impact. We continue to collaborate with leading research institutions, universities, startups and other industry stakeholders up and down the value chain. These partners bring a diversity of ideas and approaches that help our teams innovate in ways we could not do on our own. Together, we are helping to address emerging challenges in crop health, pest resistance and sustainable farming practices.
We our proud of the fact that we are known in the industry as “easy to do business with” which is a critical component of our customer value proposition. Our employees strengthen that reputation every day in the way they transact with customers, suppliers and each other. Our team is now 3,159 employees across the world and they represent more than 80 nationalities.
Our employees and the diversity of their thinking fuel Nufarm’s growth. In FY24, we publicly reported our gender pay gap data to the Australian Government. We recognise there is more work to do in advancing gender equity and we have active plans and behaviours in place to foster a workplace that is both inclusive and forward-thinking. We remain committed to our gender target of 40:40:20 in our senior leadership team by FY30.
We continue to invest in our employees’ safety, capability, growth and wellbeing. Our latest engagement survey confirms a GLINT top-quartile satisfaction rate, with employees reporting high scores in safety, authenticity and empowerment—a reflection of our commitment to an inclusive, values-driven culture.
In FY24, our omega-3 business signed distribution agreements with key food players seeking to use our Nutriterra oil as an ingredient in their own products, citing the improved health profile of our oil as a benefit. Our Aquaterra oil continues to gain traction in the aquaculture industry as that industry looks for solutions that bring additional sustainability to their own operations.
We see our role in emissions reduction as twofold: We can reduce our own emissions, and we can help others reduce their emissions via our bioenergy solutions.
FY24 saw us sign a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) with Origin Energy’s Stockyard Hill Wind Farm in Australia. This will help us progressively offset our greenhouse gas emissions from our manufacturing site at Laverton and our seed innovation centre at Horsham over the five year contract.
In FY24, we started to scale and further commercialise carinata, our sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) feedstock. With increased regulation requiring SAF mandatory percentages in the European market, Nufarm’s carinata solution provides a viable alternative—bringing increased income to carinata growers, and improved soil health and downstream emission reduction benefits to fuel distributors and airlines. We are also scaling our energy cane solution, with increased plantings in the important Brazilian market.
We remain focused on expanding our climate strategy, with plans for initiatives that will further reduce emissions and waste across our manufacturing sites, and prepare for expanded emissions reporting aligned with regulatory frameworks.
Sustainability challenges for the agriculture and food industry remain daunting as it looks to feed more than 10 billion people by 2050 with existing land. However, at Nufarm we remain confident that our industry will rise to the challenges through innovative thinking, new approaches to data and collaborative partnerships that can bring valuable solutions to reality. Nufarm’s core offering remains critical to helping growers increase yields, operate safely and regenerate their soils with practices such as minimum tillage, the use of cover crops and carbon sequestration. We remain committed to helping our customers reach their sustainability goals while we also achieve our own.
Greg Hunt
Managing Director & CEO