Firmenich CEO Gilbert Ghostine launches new $200M campus
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Gilbert Ghostine, CEO of Firmenich, opens the new campus on Tuesday, and 200 million Swiss francs will be invested in the Geneva-based company.
Interview: Michel Jeanneret
In German-speaking Switzerland, Firmenich is hardly known to anyone. The Geneva family company is in the process of becoming the world’s largest manufacturer of fragrances and flavors. The group is already one of the heavyweights in the perfume industry. Firmenich can look back on more than 100 years of company history, winning the 1939 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for its work on an artificial musk garden.
A merger with the Dutch DSM, the world market leader in food additives, will soon follow. The number of employees increases from 11,000 to 28,000. With the merger, Firmenich should finally become known to more German-speaking Swiss. Not just because of the sheer size – but also because the headquarters are moving from Lake Geneva to Kaiseraugst AG.
The loser is the Geneva region, so the fear. The company tries to allay those worries. For example, through a 200 million Swiss franc campus that was opened on Tuesday in the Geneva suburb of Satigny, where in future new fragrances and flavors will be worked on in three production facilities with adjacent laboratories. On the occasion of the opening of the campus, Gilbert met Ghostine (62), the CEO of Firmenich, for an interview.
Blick: In order to get into your office, we had to go through a security check. What secrets are you protecting?
Gilbert Ghostine: We are a science-based industry, over 400 million Swiss francs die in research and development every year. Most of the technologies contained within these walls are not yet patented. We don’t want our competitors to have access to the fruits of our labor before they are protected.
They assure that DSM-Firmenich will remain Swiss even after the merger, and that the jobs will be retained. That sounds like whitewashing!
We speak to each other because we are inaugurating our most beautiful campus for the creation of fragrances, flavors and ingredients. To ensure our competitiveness, we have examined 200 million Swiss francs here in Geneva in state-of-the-art laboratories for digitization and artificial intelligence that meet the strictest sustainability criteria. Does that really sound like whitewashing?
The cosmopolitan
Gilbert Ghostine (62) has traveled a lot. The Lebanese has often changed his place of residence and has lived with his wife on four continents. The worldly manager has been in charge of the Swiss family company Firmenich in Geneva for eight years. When the merger with DSM is complete, he will leave the company. Ghostine joins the board of directors of Danone and the Four Seasons hotel chain.
Gilbert Ghostine (62) has traveled a lot. The Lebanese has often changed his place of residence and has lived with his wife on four continents. The worldly manager has been in charge of the Swiss family company Firmenich in Geneva for eight years. When the merger with DSM is complete, he will leave the company. Ghostine joins the board of directors of Danone and the Four Seasons hotel chain.
At the end of June 2023, the new entity will be listed on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange, with investors looking for returns. How can you be so sure that no jobs will migrate?
It can be me because the Firmenich family owns 34.5 percent of the shares in the new company and is involved in this partnership over the long term. Our perfumery and beauty business, as well as global perfumery, ingredient and food research, will be managed from Geneva and the three factories will remain here. Only a few management positions are affected as the new company’s headquarters are in Kaiseraugst in the canton of Aargau.
But you too are concerned about Switzerland’s attractiveness as a location. What are other countries doing better?
For five years, French President Emmanuel Macron has been actively promoting his country’s economy as part of the “Choose France” project at the Palace of Versailles. This summer he invited 180 foreign company bosses and 70 bosses from French big companies and unicorns (start-ups with a market valuation of over a billion, editor’s note). Singapore does this three times a year. We also have to maintain our framework conditions, but also promote our strengths more actively. We live in an extremely competitive world.
For 12 years, the UN Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has ranked our country as the most innovative in the world, ahead of the US. How did this little miracle come about?
Switzerland is lucky to be a small country. If Firmenich WILL be included as one of the 100 most innovative companies in the world alongside giants like Google, it is because we have all the resources nearby and work closely with our partners. We collaborate with the University of Geneva and the ETH Lausanne, which allows us to create a strong ecosystem. Incidentally, this is also the reason why Geneva has become the Silicon Valley of perfumery.
What can happen to Switzerland with these strengths?
In a world that is changing so rapidly, one cannot rest on one’s laurels. You can’t just be good, you have to be extraordinary. We are leaders in innovation and must also be in digitization. This is a responsibility shared by political leaders and business leaders. We have to be the best to attract the best talent. This is what WILL ensure the prosperity of our country.
Which countries are the role models we should follow?
I was fortunate to live in Singapore for six years and was connected by the dynamism of this small country. What Israel is doing in terms of innovation, science and digitization is also impressive.