In the lush tropical landscapes of the Philippines, coconut production supports millions with the promise of viable livelihoods and innovation. In essence, the crop’s abundance and nature as a sustainable feedstock make it a prime constituent for products across diverse industries.

Natura Aeropack Corporation (NAC), a family-owned business with over 60 years of manufacturing expertise, leads the use of Philippine coconuts to create innovative ingredients for the food, personal hygiene and home care sectors to support an agro-industrial economy.

NAC is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Philippine-listed D&L Industries, which was started by two chemical engineers with a foundational principle of manufacturing value-added products tailored to client needs. Today, the company is helmed by the second and third generation. Its growth and evolution over the decades were driven by paying close attention to customer demands, and this approach forms the bedrock of NAC’s consistency in innovating offerings that meet and exceed consumer expectations.

Our vertically-integrated supply chain ensures that we can deliver innovative products with the perfect balance of performance and price, all while minimizing our environmental impact

These competencies, coupled with its vertical integration across the coconut sector, enable NAC to develop oleochemical ingredients that outperform alternative options. Whether for improved moisturization or strong anti-microbial properties, its offerings align with customer needs—not just from an R&D standpoint but in terms of pricing and naturality as well.

“Our vertically-integrated supply chain ensures that we can deliver innovative products with the perfect balance of performance and price, all while minimizing our environmental impact.”, says EJ Lao, Business Development Lead and 2^nd Generation member of the D&L Family Owners. “Streamlining the supply chain not only cuts costs but also reduces the overall carbon footprint for our partners.”

An Authentic Sustainability Story that Makes Economic Sense

Traditionally, most ingredients used in personal hygiene and home care products are petroleum or palm-based. While these offerings have a lower cost than sustainable ingredients, they bring broader consequences, including massive deforestation and extraction of non-renewable raw materials.

Using the abundance of coconut in the Philippines, NAC’s range of surfactants, emollients, preservatives, solubilizers, and other categories of ingredients allows clients to replace their unsustainable raw material sources with sustainable alternatives that showcase higher renewable carbon indexes.

Its value proposition is delivering truly natural ingredients that clients can use in their formulations to develop products that meet all consumer demands without breaking the bank or causing irreparable damage to the planet.

NAC has also recently commissioned a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to give visibility on the carbon footprint of their key raw materials. “NAC is uniquely positioned to conduct the LCA accurately thanks to having visibility of our supply chain through vertical integration”, says Lao. “Credible data is crucial to substantiate the sustainability of our operations and products.”

Maintaining the Long-Term Viability of Coconut Production

Unlike contemporaries focusing exclusively on palm-derived oleochemicals, NAC maintains a singular focus on sustainable coconut ingredients through its vertical integration. It has strong partnerships in upstream coconut sourcing, working closely with farmers and mills that extract coconut oil. NAC also has longstanding collaborations with farming communities to provide impactful livelihood programs to improve the sustainability of the larger coconut industry.

“We ensure that our programs also benefit coconut farmers upstream in the supply chain so that our commercialization of higher-value added coconut products has a positive, long-term impact on our industry,” states Lao.

As NAC continues to play a pivotal role in driving the coconut sector forward, the growing demand for sustainable ingredients underscores the need for infrastructure that can support the imminent expansion. The looming question of ‘What if the demand grows exponentially and exceeds the supply?’ persists in industries that rely on the production, processing and delivery of coconut-based ingredients. The growing number of older trees with lower output, combined with increasing natural disasters like droughts and typhoons, are also accelerating the need for strategies to mitigate threats to the sector.

Addressing the growing concerns, NAC works with local governments and key stakeholders to devise strategies to replant old coconut farms, growing optimal-yielding coconut varieties. It also collaborates with producers to implement educational programs tailored to assist farm productivity. These offerings extend to organic practices that can boost soil biodiversity and help replace chemical fertilizers and pesticides with greener alternatives.

Another cornerstone of NAC’s efforts to enhance the long-term future of the Philippines’ coconut industry is its partnership with Lao Foundation, Inc., the Lao family foundation and the corporate social responsibility arm of the D&L Group of Companies. The foundation engages with the younger generation of coconut farming communities through values formation training and educational scholarships. The unique approach towards Building Minds, Forming Hearts, and Changing Lives, ensures that positive impact extends not only to the scholars but also to the people they reach throughout their professional careers.

Vertically Integrated to Deliver Value Chain Advancements

A backward and forward-integrated oleochemicals partner, NAC is equipped to deliver sustainable feedstock for producing natural products and finished offerings. This position as an entity in control of the entire value chain has two distinct benefits. NAC can effectively reduce cost inefficiencies throughout a product lifecycle, which leads to cost-effective products for end-consumers. At the same time, the holistic visibility of the value chain enables it to identify potential sources of contamination upstream in the supply chain, improving the quality of the raw materials.

At the heart of these capabilities is NAC’s new sustainable facility, which was built with the concept of housing most of the supply chain under one roof. The 2.8 million square foot space is fully integrated to handle the entire value chain, from processing raw materials to their conversion into downstream ingredients. The facility also has dedicated areas for packaging finished products. Equipped with a LEED Gold-certified central hub, the building’s monitoring center continually measures critical environmental parameters, such as emissions, wastewater and noise pollution, to ensure compliance with regulatory standards and the lowest carbon footprint possible.

“We embed sustainability in every aspect of our operations, from the products we produce to our manufacturing processes. This includes using renewable fuel sources, water retention and green principles throughout our operations. Investing USD300 million in a new integrated factory in Batangas province shows our commitment to consumers who want sustainable products that also make economic sense,” says Lao.

Innovation in Every Operational Facet

Equally important to sustainability is NAC’s approach to imbuing innovation beyond product development and R&D. Its sales and marketing teams look for novel ways to transform their day-to-day and overarching tasks and goals. Questions like ‘How do we transform business models and sales channels to reach our customers and fortify the supply chain?’ ‘How do we keep advancing to keep our costs low?’ and ‘How do we secure raw materials so that we’re able to produce on time and deliver on time?’ are a few of the many that collectively form NAC’s lifeblood and drive its consistent growth.

Powered by this culture of innovation, it now stands to explore options beyond its existing portfolio of sustainable coconut-based ingredients and end-products. In doing so, NAC is poised to pioneer advancements in sustainable ingredients, ensure the long-term vitality of the coconut industry and empower communities to create a brighter future for generations to come.

In a landscape where product companies are looking to deliver sustainable offerings at the right price, NAC emerges as a vertically integrated oleochemicals partner that is equipped to support any brand’s distinct needs.