Innovatingtogether
Annual Report 2025
STRATEGIC REPORT GOVERNANCE REPORT FINANCIAL STATEMENTS OTHER INFORMATION
Contents
Strategic report
Who we are and what we do
2 Our business model
3 Our strategy
4 The story of our year
5 Chair's statement
7 Chief Executive Officer's review
10 Our key performance indicators
Review of the year
13 Financial review
20 Divisional performance reviews
26 Sustainability in focus
34 Innovation in focus
36 People in focus
41 Our Vision 2030 progress
44 Managing risk
49 Principal risks and uncertainties
Non-financial and other disclosures
58 Climate Action report
63 Section 172(1) statement and stakeholder engagement
64 Going concern and Viability statement
65 Non-financial and sustainability information statement
Governance report
67 The Chair's introduction
67 The Board at a glance
68 Our Board of Directors
72 Our Executive Committee
74 Our governance framework
75 The Board's year
78 How the Board engages (s.172 compliance)
83 Compliance with the Code
88 Audit Committee report
95 Nomination Committee report
98 Directors' remuneration report and proposed new remuneration policy
127 Other regulatory disclosures
129 Statement of Directors' responsibilities
Financial statements
Group financial statements
131 Independent auditors' report
138 Consolidated income statement
139 Consolidated statement of comprehensive income
140 Consolidated statement of changes in equity
141 Consolidated balance sheet
143 Consolidated cash flow statement
144 Reconciliation of net cash flow from operating activities to movement in net debt
145 Notes to the consolidated financial statements
Company financial statements
190 Company statement of financial position
192 Company statement of changes in equity
193 Notes to the Company financial statements
Other information
203 Environmental performance summary 207 Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)
content index
210 Glossary of terms
212 Historical financial summary
213 Advisers
About this report
Throughout this report you will find links to our website. If you are reading the PDF
version of the report, these links will be live. If reading the printed report, please go to Synthomer.com and search for the appropriate information.
Synthomer plc Annual Report 2025
Who we are
3,800
People
29
Manufacturing sites
110+
Countries served
6,000+
Customers
5
Innovation centres of excellence
We are a leading supplier of high-performance, highly specialised polymers and ingredients that play vital roles in key sectors such as coatings, construction, adhesives, and health and protection - growing markets that serve billions of end users worldwide.
Our specialist polymers enhance the sustainability and performance of a wide range of coatings and construction products. We serve customers in applications including architectural and masonry coatings, mortar modification, waterproofing and flooring, fibre bonding, and energy solutions.
Coatings & Construction Solutions
Our products help our customers bond, modify and compatibilise surfaces and components for applications including tapes and labels, packaging, hygiene, tyres and plastic modification, improving permeability, strength, elasticity, damping, dispersion and grip.
Adhesive Solutions
From our innovation centres of excellence and manufacturing sites across Europe and the Middle East, The Americas and Asia, we innovate together with our customers to develop new products and enhance existing ones tailored to their needs, with an increasing range of sustainability benefits. And through our focus on making our business more efficient, more global and even more specialised, we are positioned to lead the way as a speciality business whose products enhance people's homes and cities, lifestyles, transportation
and healthcare.
We are a world-leading supplier of water-based polymers for medical gloves, and a major European manufacturer of high-performance binders, foams and other products serving customers in a range of end markets.
Health & Protection and Performance Materials
Our business is built around three divisions, serving customers in attractive end markets where demand is driven by global megatrends including urbanisation,
demographic change, climate change and sustainability, and shifting economic power.
Visit our website to find out more about our divisions
Who we are and what we do
Our business model
We are a business-to-business speciality chemicals producer. We create value for all our stakeholders by applying our expertise and innovation capabilities to provide high-performance water-based polymers and ingredients to a wide range of blue-chip customers in multiple attractive end markets.
Value creation for stakeholders 2021-2025
Our business
Key strengths and resources
Creating products and solutions for 6,000+ long-standing customers
in multiple attractive end markets…
… with global exposure to GDP+ growth megatrends…
… through three end-customer focused divisions…
Coatings Construction
Health and protection Tapes, labels and packaging EV tyres
Energy Consumer/hygiene
Accelerating urbanisation
Demographic and social change
Climate change and sustainability
Shifting economic power
Coatings & Construction Solutions
Adhesive Solutions Health & Protection
and Performance Materials
… with innovation driving new product development in close collaboration with
customers, and a focus on sustainability throughout our value chain
EBITDA1
£1.2bn
Free Cash Flow
£374m
Wages and salaries
£1.2bn
R&D spend
£159m
Supplier spend
£7.9bn
Corporation tax paid
£160m
Dividends and capital returned to shareholders
£173m
Decrease in Scope 1 and 2 GHG2 emissions
>54kt
Talented people
3,800 entrepreneurial, highly skilled employees with the expertise and experience to drive our success
Our global footprint
29 manufacturing sites across
The Americas, EMEA and Asia, and five innovation centres of excellence
Agile supply chain
Our supply chain combines flexibility, agility and resilience through its mix of long-term supply relationships and
market-based sourcing of 25+ strategic, and hundreds of secondary, raw materials
Innovation and product development Hundreds of Synthomer technical service partners focused on understanding customers' individual product needs and collaborating with them on formulations
Cash-generative business model With scope to flex capital allocation through the cycle, within risk management limits
Supported by a small corporate centre focused on
Business excellence (SynEx) - Risk management - Capital allocation - Portfolio management
EBITDA is calculated as operating profit before depreciation, amortisation and Special Items.
GHG emissions definition as GHG Protocol Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard.
Who we are and what we do
Our strategy
Since 2022, Synthomer has been delivering on our transformational strategy to become a more focused, stronger speciality chemicals business and fulfil our purpose: creating innovative and sustainable solutions for the benefit of customers and society.
The five pillars of our strategy… … are each underpinned by three critical principles… … in pursuit of our long-term ambition.
Organic growth in attractive end markets
Rigorous and consistent portfolio management to build focused, leading positions
Operational and commercial excellence in how we run our business
Differentiated steering in how we allocate capital and talent
Diversity, equity and inclusion and holistic people development
End-market orientation
A speciality chemicals company focused
on selected attractive end markets
Increasing our specialisation, global reach and simplicity
Greater speciality weighting (by revenue)
Speciality %
50
55
Base %
50
45
70 30
In 2022
In 2025
Future
More balanced geographic distribution (by revenue)
USA/Asia %
45
50
EMEA %
55
50
60 40
In 2022
In 2025
Future
Less complexity
Manufacturing sites
43 In 2022
29 In 2025
Future
<25
in everything we do
See pages 20-25
Sustainability
as a value driver and a principle for how we run our business
See pages 26-33
Innovation
as a critical enabler
See pages 34-35
STRATEGIC REPORT GOVERNANCE REPORT FINANCIAL STATEMENTS OTHER INFORMATION
Who we are and what we do
The story of our year
We continued to make progress on the
strategic transformation of our business…
£30m in self-help delivered including further cost savings programme implemented in 2025
Site footprint reduced by two through divestments and site rationalisations
William Blythe divestment completed, with four further processes under way
New customer partnerships signed
Bank facilities refinanced to 2029 with revised covenants
Continued investment in building a high-performance culture, including a new leadership development programme
… and strong operational execution helped us navigate weak demand1…
£1,739.2m revenue
-9.9% in constant currency vs 2024
£136.5m EBITDA
-4.5% in constant currency vs 2024
7.8% EBITDA margin
+40bps vs 7.4% in 2024
£23.2m Total Group underlying loss before tax
vs £7.2m loss in 2024
£56.6m Free Cash Flow
vs £(54.7)m in 2024
… while continuing to position Synthomer for future value creation.
55% of revenues now from speciality businesses
50% of revenues from the USA and Asia
23% of volume from new and protected products (NPP) in 2025
32% reduction in absolute Scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions vs 2019
84% of new products with enhanced sustainability benefits, up from 69% in 2024
1 Continuing Group unless otherwise stated.
Synthomer plc 4 Annual Report 2025
Who we are and what we do
Chair's statement
Recent years have been a difficult period for the chemicals sector, but despite this Synthomer has made real progress with self-help measures to reduce costs and de-risk its balance sheet - while retaining a clear focus on the opportunities it can realise through its strategic transformation into a speciality products business serving attractive end markets.
" The current volatility in the chemicals industry only serves to reinforce the importance of our strategy. Future value creation will be unlocked by making our business less complex and pursuing commercial and operational excellence and clear-eyed capital allocation."
Peter Hill, CBE
Chair
Staying focused on growth, while navigating challenges
Throughout my first year as Chair, it has been clear to me that everyone at Synthomer is resolutely focused on delivering its transformational strategy to become a speciality solutions platform serving customers in attractive growth markets, and on driving the Company's innovation and sustainability agendas. The Board and leadership team agree that the current volatility
in the chemicals industry only serves to reinforce the importance of our strategy, and that future value creation will be unlocked by making our business less complex, harnessing our expertise, and pursuing
commercial and operational excellence and clear-eyed capital allocation.
Synthomer continued to make real progress on this transformation in 2025. Innovation, manufacturing excellence and expert service have strengthened our relationships with our high-quality customers. Divestment and plant rationalisation have further simplified our structure. Disciplined capital allocation is seeing resources channeled judiciously to the parts of the business which have the most potential for growth. Our CEO, Michael Willome, describes this progress on pages 7 to 9.
Self-help measures to reduce costs and protect margins
While it is right to look forward at the opportunities ahead, we also need to focus on the business in the here and now. Synthomer, like our competitors, is navigating a prolonged downturn in demand in many markets. 2025 saw further volatility, as customers serving a range of end markets dealt with uncertainty over trade tariffs and geopolitics. While our global manufacturing footprint meant we felt relatively few direct effects of tariffs, their impact came through in customer caution. This compounded other demand and supply trends. Our volumes, and revenues, were down year-on-year.
Who we are and what we do / Chair's statement continued
In this challenging environment, the Board entirely supported the focus on 'controlling the controllables'. Synthomer expanded its range of self-help measures over the year, further tightening operational execution, enhancing procurement and driving cost savings. As part of this, the Board supported the difficult but necessary decision to reduce headcount by 250 roles. On top of the c.£30m in annual self-help and strategy benefits delivered in 2025, Synthomer has outlined a further £20-25m in cost reductions extending into 2026.
The market environment remains complex, but despite the lower revenue in 2025, the Group achieved a further improvement in gross and EBITDA margins, and delivered positive Free Cash Flow, which is testament to the focus and determination to deliver the strategy across the business. This consistency has also proven to be beneficial in responding to the changed operating environment in the sector since the beginning of the Iran conflict.
Remaining focused on our balance sheet
Reducing leverage towards our 1 to 2x medium-term net debt:EBITDA target range remains a priority for the business and the Board. Our plans envisage delivering this through a combination of ongoing efficiences and strategic progress, the divestment programme and expected end-market volume growth. The steps taken in 2026 to refinance our bank debt described in the Financial review are intended to provide the appropriate near and medium-term liquidity and financial covenant headroom alongside a covenant package to deliver the Group's plans.
The Board is confident that Synthomer will emerge stronger from this period of exceptional turbulence. We have the strategy, expert teams and market positions to outperform, and I look forward to Synthomer creating significant value for shareholders and other stakeholders in the years ahead.
Engaging with our stakeholders
As a Board, we have continued to actively engage with our stakeholders, including customers, suppliers, employees and shareholders and other capital markets participants, whose support is so essential particularly in tough trading times. On a personal note, it has been a pleasure to meet Synthomer's expert and dedicated teams in my visits to sites in each of our core regions. On behalf of the Board I would like to thank all Synthomer's people for their hard work and commitment.
Welcoming progress on innovation and other ESG issues
The Board oversees strategy and delivery on environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues. Innovation and sustainbility benefits in particular are important differentiators for our customers, so we see ESG performance as a potential competitive advantage, as well as a regulatory and governance issue. Several Board colleagues are closely involved in Synthomer's Innovation Taskforce, a collaboration with senior leaders and expert teams to help drive the pace of customer-centric innovation across the Group.
Over the year, the Board has been pleased to see a number of product developments and partnerships with customers that add value through innovation and sustainability benefits. The Adhesive Solutions division is delivering lower-carbon and circular economy adhesive products for customers, including through an exciting partnership with Henkel, described on page 32. Coatings & Construction Solutions (CCS) has launched several new products aimed at the construction sector, and Health & Protection and Performance Materials (HPPM) continues
to leverage its technology and market-leading expertise to develop a bio-based nitrile latex offering for customers, amongst other commercial partnerships.
The Board treats ESG as a reserved matter, and health and safety is always the first item at every Board discussion. The Board also monitors progress on gender diversity, and I was pleased to see that women now represent more than a third of senior management, passing Synthomer's 2025 milestone target and up from 15% in 2020. Synthomer's performance in these areas is described in detail in our Vision 2030 progress on, pages 41 to 43.
The Board
Synthomer's Board has continued to evolve over the past year, with a clear focus from the Nomination Committee on ensuring that we have the skills and
experience to support and challenge the leadership team and oversee the Group's transformation. We welcomed Jonathan Silver and Janet Ashdown to the Board as Independent Non-Executive Directors in July 2025, both of whom bring considerable expertise to Synthomer. On behalf of the whole business, I would like to thank the Hon. Alexander Catto, who stepped down from the Board at our Annual General Meeting in May 2025, and Ian Tyler and Roberto Gualdoni, who both stepped down in December 2025. Between them they have given Synthomer many years of dedicated support, for which the Group will always be grateful.
Peter Hill, CBE
Chair
30 April 2026
Who we are and what we do
Chief Executive Officer's review
" In the face of volatile market conditions across the sector, we have rigorously prioritised what is within our control, delivering robust cash, earnings and margin performance while continuing to focus, simplify and strengthen our business."
Michael Willome
Chief Executive Officer
Strong operational execution and a resolute focus on 'self-help' cost reduction programmes helped us mitigate weak demand and deliver margin improvement and positive Free Cash Flow in 2025. The changing competitive dynamics in our sector have reinforced our commitment to a strategy of focusing on differentiated, speciality products for selected attractive end markets.
Controlling the controllables while driving further specialisation
Further specialisation is at the heart of our strategy, because speciality products with defined end-market benefits will be the greatest drivers of our growth over time. Improving our operating leverage in the most specialised areas of our portfolio - and anticipating the demands of customers in terms of service, innovation and sustainability - is the clear roadmap to achieving our medium-term growth, margin and returns ambitions.
Market conditions in 2025 and the start of 2026 have reinforced the urgency of the strategic transformation towards specialisation that we began in October 2022. The chemicals sector was already in a prolonged period of suppressed demand long before global tariff changes fed further volatility - and while we have limited direct exposure to tariffs, partly thanks
to our 'in region for region' manufacturing footprint, adjusting to tariffs
had a clear impact on customers, some of whom decided to 'wait and see'. Underlying structural shifts in the industry are also changing the competitive landscape, in base chemicals in particular. All these factors spur us on
to make our business even more agile and adaptable, so that we can anticipate and respond to the needs of our high-quality customers in their fundamentally attractive end markets.
At the same time, we have to safeguard our financial position so that we can continue to compete and grow. In the face of the volatile market
conditions across the sector, we have rigorously prioritised what is within our control, delivering robust cash, earnings and margin performance while continuing to focus, simplify and strengthen our business in accordance with our strategy set out in 2022. Since then, gross margin has increased by c.500bps, a substantial improvement in our operating leverage to activity levels, and over the same period we have reduced net debt from £1,024.9m to £575.0m, in part through three non-core divestments. As described
in more detail in the Financial review on page 19, we have worked constructively with our lenders to maintain a stable financial platform for delivery of the Group's plans.
Who we are and what we do / Chief Executive Officer's review continued
Positive cash and margin performance in 2025
Our 2025 revenue of £1,739.2m (2024: £1,933.1m) and EBITDA of £136.5m for the continuing Group (2024: £143.1m) were in line with expectations. They reflect a 7.2% reduction in volumes as a result of the soft demand environment, offset by further improved gross and EBITDA margin performance. This was underpinned by the expansion of our multi-year cost-saving and reliability improvement programmes and the ongoing strategic re-allocation of capital and other resources towards the higher margin, more resilient speciality solutions in our portfolio.
The Group delivered positive Free Cash Flow for the year, with a cash inflow in the second half as expected. Year-end net debt of £575.0m (H1 2025:
£638.3m, FY 2024: £597.0m) reflects our rigorous focus on profit and cash management, supported in part by the £50m receivables purchasing arrangement with Kuala Lumpur Kepong Berhad Group ('KLK') put in
place in December 2025. The Group's covenant net debt:EBITDA as at
31 December 2025 was 4.7x, well within the requirement of less than 5.25x.
Divisionally, Adhesive Solutions (AS) continued to regain share and enhance margins, through successful delivery of its reliability and performance improvement programme. The division is increasingly focused on growth supported by our speciality product capacity investment in Texas and sustainability partnerships with key customers, such as Henkel.
End-market demand across the Coatings & Construction Solutions (CCS) division varied throughout the year, particularly following the global tariff changes announced at the start of Q2. A slightly improved trend in coatings towards the end of the year was offset by a weaker period for construction and consumer sub-segments. Weak demand for energy solutions continued through the year, reflecting low levels of oil and gas drilling activity.
Health & Protection volumes for the medical glove market from both new and existing customers was disappointing for the year as a whole, although encouragingly, activity levels began to improve in Q4. Margins in this business remain substantially below pre-pandemic levels. The remaining businesses in the Health & Protection and Performance Materials (HPPM) division also had a mixed year, with a relatively strong contribution from Speciality Vinyl Polymers and in paper end markets, offset by continued challenges in the acrylate monomers business.
Focus on self-help cost savings - and continued investment in people Given the market environment, we are continuously reviewing our operating and capital expenditures and working capital balances, to identify additional cash savings opportunities within our control. This included a thorough review of our headcount in the second half of 2025, which resulted in
the difficult decision to remove around 250 roles from the organisation. We have also continued to deliver against our existing multi-year cost savings programmes, including the Group-wide procurement optimisation programme. Taken together, our operating cost reduction programmes are expected to deliver c.£20-25m in incremental gross benefits in 2026. This builds on the £30m we delivered through our self-help plans in 2025.
The decision to reduce headcount does not change the fact that our entrepreneurial teams are essential to Synthomer's future success in serving customers and delivering outstanding products. We continue to invest in building teams and a high-performance culture that is inclusive, collaborative and growth-orientated. We have sustained our commitment to our graduate programme, and to our Leadership Academy, which this year launched a new senior leadership programme 'Aspire'. I would like to thank all our people for their resilience and commitment this year.
Continuing progress on our specialisation strategy
Over the past three years, we have materially improved the profile of our portfolio, with speciality products now representing 55% of revenues and substantially more in EBITDA, whilst also growing our exposure to markets in the US and Asia, which now make up more than half of our revenues. In 2025 we continued to streamline our manufacturing footprint, passing the milestone of operating less than 30 sites, down from 43 sites in 2022. This included the divestment of William Blythe in May, alongside further plant rationalisation. These actions simplify the business, reduce capital intensity and release resources to enhance our focus on customers and products where we have the greatest opportunities. Our new target is to operate 25 sites or fewer.
In August 2025 we announced our intention to broaden the divestment programme in order to accelerate deleveraging and focus the business portfolio further. We currently have four divestment processes underway and will always keep the rest of the business portfolio under review.
Who we are and what we do / Chief Executive Officer's review continued
We also continue to enhance our commercial opportunities through partnerships. Following the formation of our technology partnership for the US medical glove market in 2024, during the year we secured an agreement with Lummus to license technology in our acrylate monomers business,
a partnership to expand Speciality Vinyl Polymers' reach in China, and a partnership with Neste and PCS to manufacture bio-based nitrile latexes.
Customer-driven innovation and sustainability
Innovation and sustainability are important differentiators for many of our customers, and therefore key to value creation for us. Our customers' ambitions increasingly demand innovative products with demonstrable sustainability benefits, so embedding a mindset which prioritises them helps drive both our commercial success and our purpose of creating specialist polymer solutions for the benefit of customers and society.
In 2025 we sustained our consistent record of ensuring that new and protected products (NPP) make up at least 20% of our sales volume. In response to customer demand, we continue to build our innovation pipeline, with 43 new products launched this year with defined sustainability benefits (see page 41). Our Innovation Taskforce, set up with Board involvement last year, helps drive the pace of change. To give a clearer measure of the commercial impact of our innovation work, we are changing our innovation KPI away from reporting NPP at the revenue level to focus solely on new products at the gross margin (GM) level. In 2025 we delivered 8.2% GM vitality (2024: 7.5%).
There were a number of commercial highlights across the year. In May 2025, AS announced a new strategic partnership and supply agreement with Henkel, helping to commercialise our new CLIMA-branded products, which help customers substantially reduce their carbon emissions. We have now achieved ISCC+ accreditation for 11 sites, enabling us to offer customers our BIO and CIRCLE products using a mass balance approach. We also retained our silver EcoVadis rating, are now in the top 2% of rated companies for sustainable procurement, and continue to make progress on our Vision 2030 sustainability roadmap (see pages 41 to 43).
Staying focused on process safety
We achieved a recordable injury case rate of 0.15, outperforming our target for the third consecutive year and remain in the top quartile for our industry. We continue to focus on improving our process safety metrics, which increased slightly despite improvements in several key sites and a reduction in incidents with the highest potential consequences in the year.
Current trading and outlook
Overall trading in the first quarter of 2026 was in line with our expectations and ahead of prior year, with much-improved CCS and stable AS performances offsetting a slower start in parts of the HPPM division.
All businesses had improving momentum through the quarter.
Since the start of the Iran conflict we have experienced substantial changes in our operating and commercial environment both up- and downstream.
Our focus on speed and agility, in region for region manufacturing footprint and strong procurement sourcing capabilities mean we are well-positioned to respond to these changes. Significant increases in raw material and to a lesser degree energy costs since the start of the conflict are being passed through in substantial pricing adjustments, while shipping volumes in several base chemical product areas are increasing due to disruption to the global distribution networks of competitors, particularly those based in Asia. To-date our global supply chains have remained robust and our joint venture manufacturing operation and sales office in the Middle East are both currently operating as normal. As a result, we are expecting robustly positive period-on-period volume and margin developments in the second quarter of the year and potentially thereafter, based on our latest trading data, and subject to developments in the Iran conflict situation.
Clearly the geopolitical and market context is highly volatile and end-market demand uncertain. We therefore make no changes to our 2026 outlook at this stage: overall we expect to make year-on-year progress driven primarily by self-help actions. Specifically, we anticipate that full year contributions from our cost reduction programmes and product investments made in
AS during 2025, ongoing margin progress in our speciality businesses and Health & Protection volume and margin improvement will be partially offset by wage inflation and normalisation of bonus accrual in the year. At the same time, the longer the trading conditions experienced in Q2 persist,
the greater the upside risks for the year.
In the medium term, we remain committed to our ambition to more than double Synthomer's earnings, through continued reliability and cost actions, end-market volume recovery and strategic delivery.
Michael Willome
Chief Executive Officer 30 April 2026
STRATEGIC REPORT GOVERNANCE REPORT FINANCIAL STATEMENTS OTHER INFORMATION
Who we are and what we do
Our key performance indicators (KPIs)
Measuring the delivery of our strategy
Financial (Total Group)
Revenue
2025 £1,768.1m
2024 £1,996.6m
2023 £2,021.2m
EBITDA
2025 £140.1m
2024 £149.2m
2023 £139.1m
We measure our progress in delivering our strategy
2022
£2,585.1m
2022 £265.1m
against a range of financial and non-financial KPIs, which we keep under review. All financial performance KPIs are shown for the Total Group as operated in the year, while the non-financial KPIs reflect the continuing Group. We set out our performance against all our Vision 2030 sustainability targets on pages 41 to 43.
2021 £2,329.5m
Strategy
DefinitionRevenue is recognised at the point when control of our products
is transferred to customers.
Comment
2021
Strategy
DefinitionOperating profit before depreciation, amortisation and
Special Items.
Comment
£522.2m
Lower revenue principally reflects volume reductions due to softer end-market demand and ongoing global competition in base chemicals businesses, as well as pass-through of lower raw material input prices in 2025.
EBITDA decreased, reflecting lower volumes partially offset by expanded self-help cost actions and strategic reorientation to higher-margin speciality businesses.
EBITDA % Underlying EPS
2025 | 7.9% | 2025 | (37.2)p | |||||
2024 | 7.5% | 2024 | (2.5)p | |||||
2023 | 6.8% | 2023 | (35.1)p | |||||
2022 | 10.3% | 2022 | 152.0p | |||||
Link to strategy | 2021 | 22.4% | 2021 | 554.0p |
Organic growth in attractive end markets Rigorous and consistent portfolio management to build focused, leading positions
Operational and commercial excellence in how we run our business
Differentiated steering in how we allocate capital and talent Diversity, equity and inclusion, and holistic people development
Synthomer plc
Strategy
DefinitionEBITDA as a percentage of revenue.
Comment
EBITDA margin increased due to the self-help actions and strategic reorientation noted above.
10
Strategy
DefinitionBasic underlying earnings per share before Special Items.
Comment
Underlying earnings per share reduced reflecting lower EBITDA and higher finance and tax costs.
Annual Report 2025
STRATEGIC REPORT GOVERNANCE REPORT FINANCIAL STATEMENTS OTHER INFORMATION
Who we are and what we do / Our KPIs continued
Financial KPIs continued Non-financial
Free Cash Flow
2025 £56.6m
% New and protected products (NPP)
2025 23%
Recordable injury case rate (RCR)
2025 0.15
2024 £(54.7)m
2024
24%
2024 0.14
2023 £85.7m
2023 22%
2023 0.16
2022 £69.2m
2022 20%
2022
0.34
2021 £217.6m
2021
24%
2021 0.31
Strategy Definition
Movement in net debt before financing activities, foreign exchange and the cash impact of Special Items, asset disposals and business combinations.
Comment
The Group delivered positive Free Cash Flow for the year, with a cash inflow in the second half as expected.
Strategy
DefinitionPercentage of sales volume in the year that can be attributed
to patented products and products launched in the past five years.
Comment
We continue to exceed our NPP target of 20%. From 2026, we are changing our innovation KPI away from reporting NPP at the revenue level to focus solely on new products, reported as gross margin (GM) vitality. Tracking gross margin rather than volume is a clearer way of measuring and targeting innovation in line with our strategy to become a more speciality-focused chemicals business.
Strategy
DefinitionRecordable injury case rate for accidents involving more than
first-aid treatment, expressed as accidents per 100,000 hours worked by employees and all contractors.
Comment
We outperformed our RCR target of 0.20 and remain in the top quartile for our industry for a third consecutive year; safety remains a priority for all our teams.
ROIC
Scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions (kt CO2e)
Gender diversity in senior management
2025
35.3%
2024
29.2%
2025 | 5.4% | 2025 | 372 | ||
2024 | 1.5% | 2024 | 301 | ||
2023 | 1.6% | 2023 | 323 | ||
2022 | 7.6% | 2022 | 367 | ||
2021 | 26.1% | 2021 | 429 |
Strategy
Definition
Underlying operating profit after tax divided by average invested capital at start and end of year (comprising equity, net debt, post-retirement benefit obligations and lease liabilities).
Comment
The reduction in 2025 underlying operating profit and higher effective tax rate was partially offset by a reduction in invested capital.
Strategy
DefinitionScope 1 - direct GHG emissions from the activities of
Synthomer or under its control.
Scope 2 - indirect GHG emissions from the generation of purchased energy consumed by Synthomer.
Comment
Our absolute Scope 1 and 2 emissions rose in 2025 versus 2024, principally reflecting our decision to pause the purchase of renewable energy attribution certificates in the year. Despite this we successfully met our 2025 objective and remain on track to achieve our 2030 Scope 1 and 2 science-based target.
Strategy
DefinitionProportion of females in the senior management population
(members of the executive team and their direct reports).
Comment
We achieved our near-term objective of having women represent 33% of senior managers by the end of 2025. Our next milestone is to reach 40% by 2030.
Synthomer plc 11 Annual Report 2025
STRATEGIC REPORT GOVERNANCE REPORT FINANCIAL STATEMENTS OTHER INFORMATION
Review of the year13 Financial review
20 Divisional performance reviews
26 Sustainability in focus
34 Innovation in focus
36 People in focus
41 Our Vision 2030 progress
44 Managing risk
49 Principal risks and uncertainties
Adding value for our customers and partners.
Synthomer plc 12 Annual Report 2025
Review of the year
Financial review: Chief Financial Officer's introduction
" The terms of the refinancing reflect the continued constructive engagement between the Group and our lenders and it has been agreed to provide the Group with appropriate near and medium-term liquidity and financial covenant headroom alongside a covenant package consistent with the Group's current business plan."
Lily Liu
Chief Financial Officer
The Group continues to focus on cost, capital discipline and maintaining a stable financial platform while the near-term demand environment in our end markets remains uncertain.
Controlling the controllables
The fundamental building blocks of long-term value remain our strong and enduring customer relationships in attractive end markets, differentiated products and robust and efficient manufacturing operations across our global footprint, all underpinned by our talented and committed people. We continue to expect that end-market growth will return to our core speciality chemicals markets after what has been a prolonged cyclical downturn, and when it does, we believe Synthomer is in a much stronger position to capitalise on its opportunities than ever before - and the performance of the business since the start of the Iran conflict disruption demonstrates this. In the meantime, we continue to focus on delivering further strategic change while tightly managing costs, capital and our other resources.
Cost savings
During 2025, we continued to focus on further improving cost competitiveness and reliability. This included further strengthening of our supplier network for key raw materials and improving a range of planning, procurement and other processes, including through the increasing adoption of AI-based tools.
As described in the CEO review on pages 7 to 9, our rigorous focus on cost management is expected to deliver c.£20-25m in benefits on an annual run-rate basis in 2026, having achieved c.£30m in 2025.
Capital allocation and portfolio management
Differentiated capital allocation and portfolio management remain important pillars of our strategy. In 2025 we focused our capital expenditure on sustenance and SHE as well as a few carefully selected growth opportunities, such as the investment to increase APO capacity in Texas which came onstream in July. We anticipate a c.£15m reduction in the capital expenditure budget in 2026.
Review of the year / Financial review: Chief Financial Officer's introduction continued
The Company's cash performance also benefitted from rigorous focus on inventory and other working capital management (with further opportunities in 2026), and pension, tax and other cash outflows were lower year-on-year as expected. The successful divestment of William Blythe in May also resulted in a net cash inflow of £24.2m, which was partially offset by cash restructuring costs of £19.2m in the year.
Robust Free Cash Flow and lower net debt
These measures all helped to achieve an improved year-end net debt position of £575.0m (2024: £597.0m) and Free Cash Flow of £56.6m (2024: £(54.7)m). Both were also supported by the £50m trade receivables purchasing arrangement with KLK, Synthomer's largest shareholder, in December 2025, which provided additional short-term financial flexibility and ensured a prudent level of banking covenant headroom at year end. Under the arrangement, KLK purchased £50m of Company trade receivables which were not eligible for inclusion in the Company's existing committed €200m non-recourse receivables financing facility. As anticipated, the total of receivables purchased under the arrangement and in the existing committed receivables financing facility together did not exceed the committed facility. The Group also notes that its largest shareholder KLK remains supportive of our strategy and performance.
As a consequence of all these efforts and despite the slowdown in volume experienced in the year, the Group's net debt: EBITDA for the purposes of the leverage ratio covenant increased modestly from 4.6x at 31 December 2024 to 4.7x at 31 December 2025, well within the required covenant of less than 5.25x.
In 2026, the Group expects to be broadly Free Cash Flow neutral after adjusting for the unwind of the £50m receivables purchasing arrangement with KLK.
Stable financial platform
An important focus for the Group in 2026 is refinancing our key committed borrowing facilities, principally the €300m RCF maturing in July 2027 and the UK Export Finance (UKEF) facilities of €288m and $230m both maturing in October 2027.
On 30 April 2026, Synthomer refinanced the existing RCF and UKEF facilities, as described in more detail on page 19. The refinancing provides a material extension of maturity dates as compared with the existing facilities, financial covenant relaxation through the life of the new facilities, and continuing RCF access to support the Group's liquidity.
The terms of the refinancing reflect the continued constructive engagement between the Group and our lenders and it has been agreed to provide the Group with appropriate near- and medium-term liquidity and financial covenant headroom alongside a covenant package consistent with the Group's current business plan.
In the period we also extended the maturity of the committed €200m non-recourse receivables financing facility to 31 July 2027.
The Group's undrawn committed liquidity as at 31 December 2025 was £385.5m.
We will continue to keep Synthomer's capital structure under review and give consideration to a range of options to reduce leverage towards our medium-term target of 1-2x, including the divestment processes described elsewhere.
Targeting growth in the medium and long term
Our near-term focus is very much on deleveraging, divestments and preserving cash flow through a period of exceptional turbulence in end markets. In the longer term, we remain committed to our previously outlined medium-term targets. Driven by the growth we expect as end-market demand recovers, we anticipate mid-single-digit revenue growth over the cycle on a constant currency basis. We aim to bring our EBITDA margin above 15%, driven by specialisation, sustainable innovation and greater differentiation, and supported by business excellence and further simplified manufacturing operations and supply chains, in line with our strategy. Over time, our goal is to drive return on invested capital into
the mid-teens.
Lily Liu
Chief Financial Officer 30 April 2026
Review of the year
Financial review
Group revenue, EBITDA and operating profit - continuing operations
Revenue for the continuing Group of £1,739.2m (2024: £1,933.1m) decreased by 9.9% in constant currency. This principally reflects a 7.2% decrease in volume due to softer end-market demand since global tariff changes were announced in Q2 and ongoing global competition in base chemicals businesses, as well as pass-through of lower raw material input prices.
EBITDA for the continuing Group of £136.5m (2024: £143.1m) reflects lower volumes partially offset by expanded self-help cost actions and strategic reorientation to higher-margin speciality businesses as described in the divisional performance reviews, with EBITDA margin increasing to 7.8% (2025: 7.4%). Corporate costs decreased to £18.0m in the period (2024: £23.7m), principally reflecting lower bonus accrual. Depreciation and amortisation was £98.9m (2024: £95.0m), resulting in underlying operating profit for the continuing Group of £37.6m (2024: £48.1m).
On a statutory basis, including the Special Items excluded from underlying measures (see below), this resulted in an operating loss for the continuing Group of £(50.2)m (2024: £(26.2)m).
Full year ended 31 December 2025, £m CCS AS HPPM Corp
Continuing
operations Discontinued Total Group
Revenue | 699.2 | 570.8 | 469.2 | - | 1,739.2 | 28.9 | 1,768.1 |
EBITDA | 64.3 | 66.0 | 24.2 | (18.0) | 136.5 | 3.6 | 140.1 |
EBITDA % of revenue | 9.2% | 11.6% | 5.2% | 7.8% | 7.9% | ||
Operating profit/(loss) - underlying | 38.4 | 31.2 | (2.1) | (29.9) | 37.6 | 3.1 | 40.7 |
Operating profit/(loss) - statutory | 6.8 | 10.8 | (33.0) | (34.8) | (50.2) | (6.1) | (56.3) |
Full year ended 31 December 2024, £m | CCS | AS | HPPM | Corp | Continuing operations | Discontinued | Total Group |
Revenue | 790.5 | 588.4 | 554.2 | - | 1,933.1 | 63.5 | 1,996.6 |
EBITDA | 85.9 | 47.9 | 33.0 | (23.7) | 143.1 | 6.1 | 149.2 |
EBITDA % of revenue | 10.9% | 8.1% | 6.0% | 7.4% | 7.5% | ||
Operating profit/(loss) - underlying | 60.6 | 15.0 | 6.1 | (33.6) | 48.1 | 4.7 | 52.8 |
Operating profit/(loss) - statutory | 32.5 | (9.5) | (11.6) | (37.6) | (26.2) | 0.3 | (25.9) |
Review of the year / Financial review continued
Special Items - continuing operations
The following items of income and expense have been reported as 'Special Items - continuing operations' and have been excluded from EBITDA and other underlying metrics:
The Taxation on Special Items - continuing operations in 2025 was £1.7m, mainly relating to deferred tax arising on the amortisation of acquired intangibles
Full year ended 31 December
2025
£m
2024
£m
and restructuring and site closure costs.
Discontinued operations
On 30 May 2025, the Group completed the divestment of William Blythe Limited ('William Blythe') to its management team alongside H2 Equity Partners, resulting in a net cash inflow of £24.2m.
In the period, £9.9m of net losses were recognised in relation to Special Items - discontinued operations (2024: £4.4m loss). This mainly comprised £8.9m of loss on disposal of William Blythe.
Amortisation of acquired intangibles | (44.4) | (45.1) |
Restructuring and site closure costs (including share of JV) | (14.0) | (15.4) |
Impairment charge | (22.5) | (5.7) |
Pension past service cost | (3.2) | (4.4) |
Sale of business | (2.7) | (3.1) |
Acquisition costs and related gains | 0.1 | (0.6) |
Software as a Service implementation costs | (1.1) | - |
Total impact on operating profit - continuing operations | (87.8) | (74.3) |
Loss on extinguishment of financing facilities | - | (1.4) |
Total impact on loss before taxation - continuing operations | (87.8) | (75.7) |
Taxation Special Items | - | 7.5 |
Taxation on Special Items | 1.7 | 7.1 |
Total impact on loss for the period - continuing operations | (86.1) | (61.1) |
Finance costs
2025
Interest payable | 63.8 | 68.0 |
Interest receivable | (4.7) | (12.1) |
Net interest expense on defined benefit obligation | 1.4 | 1.7 |
Interest element of lease payments | 3.4 | 2.4 |
Finance costs - underlying | 63.9 | 60.0 |
Loss on extinguishment of financing facilities | - | 1.4 |
Finance costs - statutory | 63.9 | 61.4 |
Full year ended 31 December £m
2024
£m
Amortisation of acquired intangibles reflects the amortisation on the customer lists, patents, trademarks and trade secrets that arose on historic acquisitions.
The intangible assets arising on the acquisition are amortised over a period of 8-20 years.
Restructuring and site closure costs in 2025 mainly comprised £3.5m of costs in relation to the Group-wide procurement optimisation programme, a £1.2m charge in relation to the ongoing integration of the acquired adhesive resins business, and £7.5m in relation to ongoing functional and global site rationalisation, and
£1.1m in relation to an onerous contract following the earlier divestment of the European tirecord business.
In 2025, a £28.5m impairment charge was booked for the Acrylate Monomers business partially offset by a
£6.0m impairment credit posted in relation to a reversal
on a prior impairment of the nitrile latex plant in Malaysia.
The pension past service cost includes a £3.2m charge in relation to a one-off non-cash past service cost arising from a revision to the calculation of late retirement benefits in the US defined benefit pension scheme.
Sale of businesses costs of £2.7m in 2025 mainly comprise costs incurred in relation to potential future divestments.
Acquisition costs and related gains of £0.1m in 2025 relate to refunds of pension costs associated with the acquisition of the adhesive resins business.
Software as a Service implementation costs of £1.1m primarily represent the cost of setting up a new customer relationship management tool.
Underlying finance costs increased to £63.9m (2024:
£60.0m) and comprise interest on the Group's financing facilities, interest rate swaps, amortisation of associated debt costs and IAS 19 pension interest costs in respect of our defined benefit pension schemes. The reduction in net interest payable mainly reflects reduced bond interest following repayment of the senior unsecured loan notes maturing July 2025, partially offset by additional factoring and reduced interest receivable on lower cash balances.
Review of the year / Financial review continued
Taxation
The Group's underlying tax charge for continuing operations was £37.7m (2024: £4.0m credit), representing an effective tax rate on the underlying loss before tax of (143.3)% (2024: 33.6%). This year's effective tax rate is principally driven by the partial derecognition of the UK, German and US deferred tax assets as well as the geographical mix of profits. The Group is within the scope of the OECD Pillar Two model rules which came into effect from 1 January 2024. Management has performed an assessment of the Group's potential exposure to Pillar Two top-up tax for 2025 and based on that assessment, transitional safe-harbour relief should apply to all jurisdictions in which the Group operates.
Therefore the Group does not expect an exposure to Pillar Two top-up tax.
Non-controlling interest
The Group continues to hold 70% of Revertex (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd and its subsidiaries. These entities form a relatively minor part of the Group, so the impact on underlying performance from non-controlling interests is not significant.
Earnings per share
Earnings per share is calculated based on the weighted average number of shares in issue during the year.
The weighted average number of shares for 2025 was 163.5m (2024: 163.5m). As at 30 April 2026, the Company had 163.5m shares in issue.
Underlying earnings per share was (37.2) pence for the year, a decrease from (2.5) pence in 2024. The statutory earnings per share was (96.0) pence (2024: (44.4) pence).
Currency
The Group presents its consolidated financial statements in sterling and conducts business in many currencies. As a result, it is subject to foreign currency risk due to exchange rate movements, which affect the
Group's translation of the results and underlying net assets of its operations. To manage this risk, the Group uses foreign currency borrowings, forward contracts and currency swaps to hedge non-sterling net assets, which are predominantly denominated in euros, US dollars and Malaysian ringgits.
In 2025, the continuing Group experienced a translation headwind of £0.2m on EBITDA, with average FX rates against our three principal currencies of €1.17, $1.32 and MYR 5.64 to the pound.
Given the global nature of our customer and supplier base, the impact of transactional foreign exchange can be very different from translational foreign exchange. We are able to partially mitigate the transaction impact by matching supply and administrative cost currencies with sales currencies. To reduce volatility which might affect the Group's cash or income statement, the Group hedges net currency transaction exposures at the point of confirmed order, using forward foreign exchange contracts. The Group's policy is, where practicable, to hedge all exposures on monetary assets and liabilities.
Cash performance
The table overleaf summarises the movement in net debt and is in the format used by management.
Underlying operating profit (excluding joint ventures) decreased to £39.3m reflecting the trading performance described above.
The net working capital inflow of £72.8m principally reflects an increase in committed receivables facility utilisation and receivable sales of £77.2m (see below), as well as lower inventory levels at year end.
In December 2022, the Group put in place non-recourse receivables financing facilities for a maximum committed amount of €200m. Factored receivables assigned under the facilities amounted to £105.6m
net at 31 December 2025 (30 June 2025: £114.1m net, 31 December 2024: £87.3m net). Under the facilities,
the risks and rewards of ownership are transferred to the assignees. The duration of the committed
receivables financing facility was recently extended to 31 July 2027.
In December 2025, the Group entered into a temporary trade receivables purchasing arrangement with a subsidiary of its largest shareholder KLK. Under the arrangement, the Group sold to KLK c.£50m of trade receivables due on or before 28 February 2026, which were not eligible for inclusion in the committed €200m non-recourse receivables financing facility. The purchasing arrangement terms were agreed on an arms-length basis and were consistent with terms available from third-party market participants for an arrangement of this nature.
Depreciation was broadly flat, while amortisation of other intangibles increased due to the Pathway business transformation programme. Net capital expenditure was
£86.3m (2024: £83.2m), principally for recurring SHE and sustenance expenditure, the Group's investment in APO capacity in Texas and Pathway. The Group anticipates lower levels of capital expenditure in FY 2026 compared with FY 2025.
Net interest paid increased to £60.6m (2024: £54.6m) reflecting reduced interest receivable on lower cash balances and increased interest costs on factored receivables in the year.
Net tax received was £0.5m (2024: £18.1m paid) reflecting repayments of prior year tax and lower tax payments due on account.
In the year, £5.3m in cash contributions were made to the Group's pensions schemes, substantially reduced from the prior year (2024: £19.8m) which included c.£17.4m in previously agreed deferred contributions to the UK pension scheme which are not expected to recur.
The cash impact of Special Items including restructuring and site closure costs was an outflow of £19.2m.
Review of the year / Financial review continued
Movement in net debt
Opening net debt | (597.0) | (499.7) |
Underlying operating profit (excluding joint ventures) | 39.3 | 51.2 |
Movement in working capital | 72.8 | (24.9) |
Depreciation of property, plant and equipment | 86.0 | 84.3 |
Amortisation of other intangible assets | 13.4 | 12.1 |
Net capital expenditure | (86.3) | (83.2) |
Operating Cash Flow1 | 125.2 | 39.5 |
Net interest paid | (60.6) | (54.6) |
Tax received/(paid) | 0.5 | (18.1) |
Pension funding | (5.3) | (19.8) |
Adjustment for gain on sale of assets | (1.9) | (4.3) |
Adjustment for share-based payments charge | 2.6 | 1.6 |
Adjustment for movement of provision | (3.9) | - |
Dividends received from joint ventures | - | 1.0 |
Free Cash Flow | 56.6 | (54.7) |
Cash impact of settlement of interest rate derivative contracts | 0.6 | - |
Cash impact of restructuring and site closure costs | (17.7) | (20.2) |
Cash impact of Software as a Service costs | (1.1) | - |
Cash impact of acquisition costs | (0.4) | (1.7) |
Payment of EC fine settlement amount | - | (39.1) |
Proceeds on sale of business | 21.3 | 20.5 |
Rights issue costs | - | (4.7) |
Repayment of principal portion of lease liabilities | (12.4) | (12.1) |
Dividends paid to minority interests | (2.1) | (0.5) |
Foreign exchange and other movements | (22.8) | 15.2 |
Movement in net debt | 22.0 | (97.3) |
Closing net debt | (575.0) | (597.0) |
Full year ended 31 December
2025
£m
2024
£m
Proceeds on sale of business of £21.3m comprises
£24.2m from the sale of William Blythe noted above, less £2.9m in sale of business costs related to future divestment projects.
Group debt is denominated in euros and dollars. The euro strengthened relative to sterling during the year, leading to a foreign exchange loss in net debt.
Financing and liquidity
At 31 December 2025, net debt was £575.0m (30 June 2025: £638.3m, 31 December 2024: £597.0m). The reduction principally reflects the positive Free Cash Flow movements noted above and the divestment proceeds for the William Blythe business, partially offset by restructuring and site closure costs, capital repayment of lease liabilities, and the movements in foreign currency-denominated net debt balances.
As at 31 December 2025, committed borrowing facilities principally comprised: a €300m RCF maturing in July 2027, the UK Export Finance (UKEF) facilities of
€288m and $230m both maturing October 2027, and
€350m of five-year 7.375% senior unsecured loan notes maturing May 2029. At 31 December 2025, the RCF was drawn down by £48.0m and the UKEF facilities were fully drawn. The remaining €150m in 3.875% senior unsecured loan notes maturing July 2025 were repaid during the year.
The Group's undrawn committed liquidity at 31 December 2025 was £385.5m, comprising unrestricted cash and short-term deposits of
£189.9m and the undrawn portions of the RCF.
The existing RCF and the UKEF facilities are subject to one leverage ratio covenant. The Group's net debt:
EBITDA for the purposes of the leverage ratio covenant increased to 4.7x at 31 December 2025 (31 December 2024: 4.6x), principally due to lower EBITDA in the period, but well within the 5.25x requirement.
1 Operating Cash Flow is defined as Total Group EBITDA plus/minus net working capital movement less capital expenditure.
Review of the year / Financial review continued
Note that the definitions used for the covenant test include a number of adjustments to the net debt and EBITDA figures shown elsewhere; typically these definitional adjustments increase the covenant ratio by 0.4-0.5x compared with using reported net debt and EBITDA.
Refinancing
On 30 April 2026, Synthomer refinanced its existing RCF and UKEF facilities (the 'Refinancing'), being implemented through a wholly owned subsidiary of Synthomer plc, through which a €300m new RCF and new UKEF debt facilities of €288m and $230m (the same size as the Group's previous facilities) have been made available. The refinanced debt matures in February 2029.
The new RCF and new UKEF facilities include a net debt:EBITDA leverage ratio covenant which will be tested against covenant levels on a quarterly basis and a minimum liquidity covenant which will be tested on a monthly basis. The net debt:EBITDA ratios required under the covenant for year end 2026, 2027 and 2028 have been set at not more than 6.25x, 5.25x, and 4.25x respectively, with intra-year levels aligned to the Group's expected cash flow profile, starting from 30 September 2026 (with no test as at 30 June 2026). The Refinancing is also supported by a comprehensive security and guarantee package provided by certain members of the Group, including pursuant to the "permitted liens" permissions under Synthomer's senior unsecured notes (the 'Notes').
The Notes remain in place, and the terms of the Notes indenture and maturity of the Notes have not been amended. In connection with the Refinancing, certain of the Company's subsidiaries (which hold the Group's operations in the USA): have become "unrestricted subsidiaries" under the Notes indenture; have, to the extent applicable, been released as Notes guarantors; and have granted guarantees and security in support of the Refinancing.
Following the Refinancing, the Group expects net financing costs of c.£70m in 2026.
The Company has agreed customary fees with its lenders and UKEF in connection with the Refinancing. Subject to certain conditions, the new UKEF facility lenders have the option to elect to receive certain of these fees in the form of ordinary shares in the capital of the Company (rather than in cash) at a price per share equal to 37.5p per share. Based on current expressions of interest, the Company expects to issue new ordinary shares representing less than 0.7% of the current issued share capital of the Company as a result of the share election option for these fees.
Lenders will also have a right to receive an exit fee ("Exit Fee") on repayment or maturity of the new facilities. The Exit Fee will be equivalent to 1.25%
of commitments. The new UKEF facility lenders may, subject to certain conditions, elect to receive certain of these fees in the form of ordinary shares in the capital of the Company (rather than in cash) at a price per share based on the 90-day volume weighted average price
as at the day prior to the repayment or maturity.
Balance sheet
Net assets of the Group decreased by 17.4% to £914.5m at 31 December 2025, mainly reflecting the loss in the year.
Provisions
The Group provisions balance decreased to £21.4m (31 December 2024: £35.3m) reflecting cash utilisation of £4.2m and the sale of William Blythe which held a total provision of £2.4m.
Retirement benefit plans
The Group's principal funded defined benefit pension schemes are in the UK and the USA and are both closed to new entrants and future accrual. The Group also operates an unfunded defined benefit scheme in Germany and various other defined contribution overseas retirement benefit arrangements.
The Group's net retirement obligation decreased by
£10.1m to £39.6m at 31 December 2025 (31 December 2024: £49.7m), reflecting changes in the market value of assets and the valuation of liabilities in accordance with IAS 19, including a surplus of £40.3m for the UK scheme. The net retirement obligation reduction is driven by £5.3m of cash contributions and actuarial gains of £13.6m, partially offset by exchange losses
of £2.8m.
STRATEGIC REPORT GOVERNANCE REPORT FINANCIAL STATEMENTS OTHER INFORMATION
Review of the year
Coatings & Construction Solutions
CCS
" We're strengthening our
market-driven innovation pipeline and customer proposition to unlock future opportunities while continuing to optimise costs."
Ana Perroni Laloe
President, Coatings & Construction Solutions
Total addressable market
£9bn+
People
2,000
Manufacturing sites
17
Our most speciality-focused division experienced a challenging demand environment in 2025 as customers and end users responded to global tariff changes and uneven activity levels in sectors including energy and construction. The division initiated further cost efficiency measures while continuing to invest in its long-term profitable growth opportunities, including its market-driven innovation pipeline.
2025 revenue by end market
Main product applications |
Architectural and masonry coatings |
Waterproofing and flooring |
Fibre bonding |
Energy solutions |
Total
£699.2m
2025 revenue change vs 2024 | |||
Volume | Price/mix | FX | Total |
(6.8)% | (4.8)% | 0.1% | (11.5)% |
Architectural coatings | 30% |
Consumer materials | 25% |
Construction | 21% |
Industrial coatings | 14% |
Energy solutions | 10% |
Synthomer plc 20 Annual Report 2025
STRATEGIC REPORT GOVERNANCE REPORT FINANCIAL STATEMENTS OTHER INFORMATION
Review of the year / CCS continued
1 Underlying constant currency revenue and profit retranslate current year results using the prior year's average exchange rates.
CCS performance review
Constant | ||||||
2025 | 2024 | Change | currency1 | |||
Full year ended 31 December | £m | £m | % | % | ||
Revenue | 699.2 | 790.5 | (11.5) | (11.6) | ||
Volumes (ktes) | 478.4 | 513.1 | (6.8) | |||
EBITDA | 64.3 | 85.9 | (25.1) | (25.1) | ||
EBITDA % of revenue | 9.2% | 10.9% | ||||
Operating profit - underlying | 38.4 | 60.6 | (36.6) | (36.6) | ||
Operating profit - statutory | 6.8 | 32.5 | (79.1) | |||
Performance
Divisional revenue decreased by 11.6% in constant currency to £699.2m (2024: £790.5m), driven by a 6.8% decrease in volume compared with 2024, changes in mix, and lower pricing reflecting pass-through of raw material costs. Changes in oil and gas drilling activity led to de-stocking in our
high-margin energy solutions business in H1, which began to stabilise
in H2, while demand in coatings and consumer end markets was volatile, partly in response to global tariff changes. Volumes in the USA were particularly affected by customer caution and smaller order sizes, as well as customer formulation changes, and CCS responded through measures including localising some production from Europe to the USA. The construction segment began to show modest signs of volume improvement in European markets, albeit from low levels. A number of new business wins and regains towards the end of the period reflected
a refreshed focus on addressable growth markets and changes in the division's management team.
Divisional gross margin performance was also mixed. An improvement from low levels in construction, driven by the launch of new products, and relatively stable performances in coatings and consumer segments, were offset by adverse mix effects in energy solutions. CCS enhanced its focus on cost reduction initiatives, including in raw material procurement as part
of Synthomer's Group-wide procurement optimisation plan. The division delivered c.£13m in cost savings in the year. However this was offset by negative operating leverage to lower volumes. As a result, CCS generated EBITDA of £64.3m (2024: £85.9m), equating to an EBITDA margin of 9.2% (2024: 10.9%).
CCS is typically the most seasonally weighted of our divisions to the first half.
Strategy
In response to market conditions, CCS accelerated and reprioritised a number of asset optimisation projects and other cost and capacity
management activities during the year, including temporarily idling excess capacity, reducing shift patterns and undertaking a broader review of operating costs including headcount. 2026 performance is expected
to benefit from the annualisation of a number of these projects which completed during the course of 2025. The division is also implementing a number of inventory management measures to enhance cash flow.
In addition to these short-term measures, CCS remains focused on strengthening its leading position as a manufacturer of high-performance speciality products and materials, including through market-driven innovation. This included the launch of a number of new products for the construction segment in 2025 and increased overall product vitality. This will continue, as we adapt our product portfolios for market areas where we see growth opportunities, such as battery technology and products that support data centre construction.
We also continue to embed a more end-market aligned approach across the division, with key account management and value selling allowing us to leverage our leading market positions in niche European markets into other, faster-growing geographies including China, the Middle East and USA.
Synthomer plc 21 Annual Report 2025
STRATEGIC REPORT GOVERNANCE REPORT FINANCIAL STATEMENTS OTHER INFORMATION
Review of the year
Adhesive Solutions
AS
" We continue to strengthen our speciality portfolio, with a focus on diversification, sustainable innovation and capacity, while delivering further benefits from our performance improvement programme."
Stephan Lynen
President, Adhesive Solutions
Total addressable market
£10bn+
People
700
Manufacturing sites
6
Strong earnings and margin momentum continued despite subdued underlying market conditions, driven by further progress on cost and reliability improvement, together with an increased focus on innovation and global growth initiatives.
2025 revenue by end market
Main product applications |
Tapes and labels |
Tyres and plastic modification |
Packaging and hygiene |
Total
£570.8m
2025 revenue change vs 2024 | |||
Volume | Price/mix | FX | Total |
(1.2)% | (0.3)% | (1.5)% | (3.0)% |
Tapes and labels | 34% |
Assembly and other | 28% |
Tyres | 15% |
Packaging | 9% |
Plastic modification | 8% |
Hygiene | 6% |
Synthomer plc 22 Annual Report 2025
STRATEGIC REPORT GOVERNANCE REPORT FINANCIAL STATEMENTS OTHER INFORMATION
Review of the year / AS continued
AS performance review
Constant | ||||||
2025 | 2024 | Change | currency1 | |||
Full year ended 31 December | £m | £m | % | % | ||
Revenue | 570.8 | 588.4 | (3.0) | (1.5) | ||
Volumes (ktes) | 266.0 | 269.3 | (1.2) | |||
EBITDA | 66.0 | 47.9 | +37.8 | +39.5 | ||
EBITDA % of revenue | 11.6% | 8.1% | ||||
Operating profit - underlying | 31.2 | 15.0 | +108.0 | +110.0 | ||
Operating profit/(loss) - statutory | 10.8 | (9.5) | n/m | |||
1 Underlying constant currency revenue and profit retranslate current year results using the prior year's average exchange rates. | ||||||
Performance
Divisional revenue decreased 1.5% in constant currency to £570.8m (2024:
£588.4m), broadly in line with sales volumes after a slowing of demand from Q2 as end customers responded to global tariff changes. Volumes were also constrained by a prolonged operational shutdown at our Longview site in Texas, USA, partly to increase APO capacity. Third-party contractor issues meant the turnaround took longer than expected, and led to temporary constraints in deliveries to customers. With the project completed in July, however, the division now has capacity for volume growth in higher-margin speciality products.
Overall, the division demonstrated resilient pricing and improved gross margin, led by its speciality product portfolio, which accounted for c.60% of AS revenue in the year. Many base products remained under pricing pressure from oversupply and global competition, particularly in European markets, although in certain categories the business benefitted modestly from selective competitor capacity reductions or closures.
Geographically, revenue grew in Asia and was resilient in the USA, but lower in Europe. From an end-market perspective, assembly, tyres, and tapes and labels had a robust period while packaging and hygiene revenues were more subdued.
Divisional EBITDA increased significantly, by 39.5% in constant currency, to
£66.0m (2024: £47.9m), with EBITDA margin increasing by 350bps to 11.6% (2024: 8.1%). This was principally due to lower operating costs driven by the reliability and performance improvement programme put in place in 2023 delivering c.£11m in 2025, supported by raw material cost savings achieved through the Group-wide procurement optimisation programme.
Strategy
AS is focused on a number of strategic growth initiatives designed to build on our leading positions in a range of speciality adhesive applications in attractive end markets. These are often built around multi-year relationships with high-quality customers, which leverage our global production network and comprehensive technology and service platform. Our focus on supporting customers' ambitions for sustainability, circularity and recyclability is key to many such partnerships.
In April 2025, we announced a strategic partnership and supply agreement with Henkel, focused on enabling carbon emission reductions in its hot melt adhesive product portfolio. The year also saw our launch of CLIMA-branded products, which deliver at least a 20% cradle-to-gate reduction in certified product carbon footprint.
The majority of AS investment aims to strengthen our speciality portfolio in line with the Group's differentiated steering strategy. Following our APO capacity expansion and other actions at Longview, this will be
a key growth opportunity in the coming years. In the more volatile and competitive base product areas (c.40% of divisional revenue) we continue to focus on enhancing cost competitiveness and reliability, and leveraging partnerships. Our project, launched in 2024, to strengthen our supply chain for hydrocarbon resin production in Europe is managed under contract by Dow at its site in Böhlen, Germany, which is now scheduled for closure at the end of 2027. During the year we have implemented additional global partnerships to secure our raw material supplies.
AS also continues to build on the dedicated performance improvement programme, launched in 2023, which has transformed the adhesive resin business acquired by Synthomer in 2022. The programme has enabled improvements in reliability for customers and achieved c.£35m in cumulative benefits to date, by reducing costs and improving end-to-end operations, from supplier network improvement to production site efficiency and delivery logistics. The programme was further expanded to target a total of at least £40m in cumulative benefits by the end of 2026.
Synthomer plc 23 Annual Report 2025
STRATEGIC REPORT GOVERNANCE REPORT FINANCIAL STATEMENTS OTHER INFORMATION
Review of the year
Health & Protection and Performance Materials
HPPM
" We continue to seek ways to enhance our proposition to customers through innovation and service support,
while driving cost efficiencies and portfolio rationalisation in line with Synthomer's strategy."
Rob Tupker
President, Health & Protection and Performance Materials
Total addressable market
£4bn+
People
1,000
Manufacturing sites
6
HPPM continued to focus on cost efficiency and unit margins as volumes were squeezed by lower customer demand while continuing to develop new products for the Health & Protection market, where underlying global growth drivers remain strong. William Blythe was divested in
Main product applications |
Medical glove manufacture |
Speciality paper and food packaging |
Carpet and artificial turf |
Polymer modifiers |
May 2025 and our portfolio rationalisation plans continue to progress.
2025 revenue by end market
Continuing
£469.2m
2025 revenue change vs 2024 | |||
Volume | Price/mix | FX | Total |
(10.4)% | (6.0)% | 1.1% | (15.3)% |
Health & Protection | 34% |
Paper | 18% |
Carpet | 14% |
Acrylate monomers | 13% |
Speciality vinyl polymers | 10% |
Foam | 7% |
Antioxidants | 4% |
Synthomer plc 24 Annual Report 2025
STRATEGIC REPORT GOVERNANCE REPORT FINANCIAL STATEMENTS OTHER INFORMATION
Review of the year / HPPM continued
EBITDA % of revenue
5.2% 6.0%
Operating loss - statutory
(33.0) (11.6) +184.5
William Blythe has been classified as a discontinued operation
Underlying constant currency revenue and profit retranslate current year results using the prior year's average exchange rates.
Operating (loss)/profit - underlying (2.1) 6.1 n/m n/m
HPPM performance review
Constant | ||||||
2025 | 2024 | Change | currency2 | |||
Full year ended 31 December (continuing)¹ | £m | £m | % | % | ||
Revenue | 469.2 | 554.2 | (15.3) | (16.5) | ||
Volumes (ktes) | 522.5 | 583.3 | (10.4) | |||
EBITDA | 24.2 | 33.0 | (26.7) | (28.5) | ||
Continuing divisional performance
Divisional revenue was £469.2m (2024: £554.2m), driven by a 10.4% decrease in volume and lower prices reflecting reduced raw materials costs. Volumes in Health & Protection decreased by 17.3% compared to 2024, as our latex glove manufacturing customers reacted to market developments in the USA, where the announcement in summer 2024 of tariff increases on their global competitors from 1 January 2025 drove some pre-emptive buying activity. This began to moderate in the second half, and demand from both new and existing customers began to improve in Q4. We secured another income stream in H1 for additional services from our multi-year technology partnership to support growth in the onshore US glove market. Underlying hygiene demand growth remains strong globally, but unit margins remained low by historical standards.
In our Performance Materials portfolio, volumes decreased by 2.5% as market conditions for Acrylate Monomers and SBR for carpet and foam in Europe remained difficult. Speciality Vinyl Polymers, Antioxidants and European Paper activities were more robust.
Divisional EBITDA decreased by 28.5% in constant currency to £24.2m (2024: £33.0m), with an EBITDA margin of 5.2% (2024: 6.0%). The division is making EBITDA margin progress through operating cost reductions, including from further efficiency programmes and the closure of a small
manufacturing plant in China in June; however this was offset by negative operating leverage to lower volumes in the Performance Materials business, with Acrylate Monomers particularly affected.
Strategy
Much of the HPPM division has base chemicals characteristics, so our differentiated steering approach focuses on improving cost efficiency across our value chains while enhancing our overall value proposition to customers through selective investment in process and product innovation and sustainability.
Our Health & Protection business continues to focus on opportunities to leverage our position as a global market leader in NBR manufacturing with significant technology and manufacturing expertise. This is reflected in our support for customers as the latex glove demand environment evolves.
Examples in 2025 include our partnership with suppliers Neste and PCS to manufacture bio-based nitrile latexes for the glove industry. We also continue to develop other products that aid reusability, weight reduction and high performance for customers in this market.
We also continue to support our US partner with further technology licensing and manufacturing expertise as they develop onshore US capacity for nitrile latex and glove manufacture, and we are exploring other potential partnership opportunities for this business globally that require little or no capital investment.
In Performance Materials we signed a partnership with Lummus Technology to license Synthomer's proprietary acrylic acid esters technology, part of
the Acrylate Monomers business, which will now reach a broader market through Lummus' platform, and secured a major multi-year contract in our European Paper business. Speciality Vinyl Polymers also commenced a partnership to expand its reach in China. A number of projects are underway to deliver ISCC PLUS-certified reductions in the carbon emissions of our production processes, conferring sustainability benefits for customers seeking to reduce their own value-chain carbon footprints.
In May 2025 we completed the divestment of William Blythe Limited, a
non-core inorganic chemistry business, to its management team alongside H2 Equity Partners. This transaction further reduced the complexity of our site portfolio and has enabled greater focus of capital, time and other resources. As described in the CEO review, during the year we broadened the scope of our non-core divestment portfolio, and are progressing with several processes to accelerate the Group's deleveraging and simplify the business portfolio further.
Synthomer plc 25 Annual Report 2025
STRATEGIC REPORT GOVERNANCE REPORT FINANCIAL STATEMENTS OTHER INFORMATION
Review of the year
Sustainability in focus: building deeper partnerships with our customers
"This year we have focused on building stronger partnerships with our customers and other key stakeholders to create value and shape a more sustainable future."
Chris Brown
Vice President, Environmental, Social and Governance
This was another productive year for our sustainability agenda, with work to accelerate innovation and deepen partnerships with customers and suppliers continuing, despite ongoing market challenges.
Synthomer has come a long way since we set out our Vision 2030 framework five years ago. Today, sustainability is a business principle and a foundation of our growth strategy and we have made consistent progress against most of our targets. Targets are important, since they help us make - and report on - progress, but they are not a strategy
in themselves. Which is why everything we do when it comes to sustainability must be in service of our key stakeholders' needs, and demonstrate the benefits to our customers of choosing us over
another supplier. We want them to see us as a sustainability enabler. If they do not, we risk missing out on future business opportunities.
So while we have continued sharpening our approach in areas like innovation, human rights and value chain emissions data analysis, we are also building deeper partnerships with our customers and suppliers to help accelerate change across our value chain.
Importantly, others are recognising our progress. In 2025, we won
a sustainability award from a key adhesives customer, Henkel, and a supplier award from our high-performance materials customer, Nitto. This second award recognised our commitment to quality, service and sustainability. We also retained our CDP Climate A- rating, which places us in the leadership group, and our silver EcoVadis rating, where we are now in the top 2% of rated companies for sustainable procurement.
This year also marked the end of the first of three time horizons that we set out two years ago in our climate transition action plan. As well as finding new ways to meet our science-based 2030 GHG emissions targets, the action plan will help us identify the business opportunities to reach our 2050 net zero ambition.
That deadline is getting closer. We need to start developing the next generation of sustainable solutions today in order to keep delivering the products that our customers will need in future. We know from our latest scenario analysis that if we do not, we may miss opportunities to continue delivering our growth strategy.
» See our latest scenario analysis on pages 58 to 63.
Synthomer plc 26 Annual Report 2025
Review of the year / Sustainability in focus
Delivered first sales of our BIO and CLIMA products.
Won supplier sustainability awards from two key customers.
Launched a new customer portal providing key product safety information.
Eliminated alkylphenol ethoxylates from our global product portfolio.
Developed a new greenhouse gas forecasting model, identifying new options to deliver our climate transition plan.
Maintained our A- 'leadership' level for CDP Climate.
More than 1,900 employees engaged through our Sustainability Academy.
Highlights from 2025
Continued commitment under challenging circumstances
Unlocking these opportunities will be challenging, not least if broader market conditions continue to test our industry. We have certainly seen a shift in business priorities in 2025, as customers, suppliers and peers prioritise managing cost pressures. However, change is not linear and a good strategy does not get blown about by short-term challenges. Sustainability remains a key enabler for our strategy, but it is also a business consideration like any other.
Our ISCC PLUS certification is a good example. In 2025, we achieved ISCC PLUS accreditation for 11 of our manufacturing plants, enabling us to offer customers our BIO and CIRCLE products using the mass balance approach. While changes in short-term business priorities have made it harder to incorporate additional cost, we know that customers are interested in these products and we have now made initial customer sales in our Adhesives and our Coatings businesses.
While it is important we help our customers understand the benefits of our products today, it is essential that we understand their needs, challenges and timelines so we can work together more effectively to create the next generation of more sustainable products.
Accelerating change through greater collaboration
Sustainable change has to be championed by the people who work most closely with our customers and suppliers. Our Sustainability Academy, which we launched in 2024, is playing an important role in this, helping our commercial, innovation and procurement teams develop the tools and language they need to become those champions. And it is thanks to their hard work and collaboration that we are building deeper partnerships across our value chain.
As a B2B company, working with our customers to
help them realise their goals - and with our suppliers to understand theirs - is the only way we will achieve ours. Our partnerships with key universities are important here. They help us accelerate innovation and train the next generation of synthetic and polymer chemists in key aspects of green chemistry (see page 35). We increasingly participate in key industry organisations, such as the European Chemical Industry Council (CEFIC), the American Chemistry Council (ACC) and
the Chemicals Industries Association (CIA) in the UK. We are also an active member of the Together for Sustainability (TfS) initiative. This year we participated in three TfS workstreams focusing on assessing
and auditing suppliers, building skills and Scope 3 emissions. These collaborations are essential given our industry's importance as nations and regions build their industrial strategies in the face of increasing competition from other parts of the world.
Review of the year / Sustainability in focus
In 2024, we developed a new climate transition action plan to support our journey towards net zero. The plan focuses on four specific areas and is set out across three time horizons (2025, 2026-2030 and 2030-2050):
Integrating a GHG forecasting model into our business plans to identify the product innovation and market development options to reduce our GHG emissions over the next five or more years
Reducing Scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions by continuing to deliver our current five-year capital improvement plan, driving energy efficiency through our manufacturing excellence programmes, sourcing 100% renewable electricity for all our sites and developing net-zero roadmaps for three pilot manufacturing sites
Reducing Scope 3 GHG emissions by selectively sourcing lower-carbon fossil-based feedstocks, sourcing certified sustainable feedstocks, developing value chain partnerships and innovating novel (recycled, bio-based and CO2 -derived) feedstocks and products
Risk assessment and scenario analysis to further develop our strategic understanding of climate risk and its financial impacts for our business.
Our climate transition action plan
Getting to work on delivering our climate transition action plan
We have reported against the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures for many years (see pages 58 to 63) and in 2024
conducted our first double materiality assessment (see page 30) and implemented our new climate transition action plan (see left).
Both have strengthened our understanding of our biggest risks and opportunities and confirmed that we were broadly focused on our most material issues through our Vision 2030 framework. What our climate
transition action plan also showed us is that the biggest, fastest impact we can have between now and 2030 is through sourcing lower-carbon feedstocks.
As well as introducing the ISCC PLUS products, this year we piloted the use of low-carbon versions of two key raw materials: butyl acrylate (BA) and butadiene (BD).
The pilot targeted lower-carbon BA and BD at two specific sites and improved our understanding of how to account for multiple sources of a raw material in a product carbon footprint. It also highlighted practical challenges for our procurement team in maintaining a secure supply from a smaller pool of suppliers. We will use what we have learnt to continue developing options for lower-carbon products and better understand their impact on our procurement approach. This will help us determine better ways to deliver lower-carbon options for our customers.
As part of our action plan, we are working to identify alternative raw materials to complement existing lower-carbon fossil-based products over the medium and long term. In 2025, we reviewed market-ready and emerging drop-in feedstocks from recycled, bio-based and CO2-derived sources, as well as new chemistries and technologies for future polymers. All three alternative feedstocks - and several relevant
technologies - are projected to become commercially significant by 2030, presenting meaningful opportunities for our portfolio. The barriers to adoption are now shifting from technical feasibility towards the need
for stronger market pull, as well as supportive policy frameworks to help these lower-carbon solutions compete with conventional fossil-based materials.
Our procurement teams play a crucial role here. They are helping us build closer relationships with key suppliers so we can identify and source the raw materials we need to deliver the next generation of sustainable products, proving that innovation does not always happen in a laboratory.
New GHG emissions forecasting model to accelerate progress
As in 2024, much of what we have achieved this year is thanks to data insights and how they inform our discussions with stakeholders. This year, we have worked with our businesses and functions to develop a new GHG emissions forecasting model that helps us understand the potential future impact of our business growth plans. The model also enables us to review
our raw material and product costs versus carbon impact. Our businesses and procurement teams have responded positively to the tool and its ability to open conversations with customers and suppliers about the impact of GHG emissions in the same way as for cost and price.
This tool is another important milestone in addressing our Scope 3 emissions - by far the largest proportion of our carbon footprint. Developing it has involved mapping our customers' purchases against the
raw materials we use to make our products and the suppliers we purchase them from. It provides exceptional granularity on any given emissions
trajectory for individual customers and product lines.
Review of the year / Sustainability in focus
It has also helped identify important data gaps and the specific suppliers we need to work with more closely to understand their carbon footprint and goals.
We plan to improve the model in 2026 to allow the tool to demonstrate the margin, price and carbon impact of our products. This will help us make better informed business decisions while delivering more sustainable products for our customers.
We see plenty more potential for other digital tools and artificial intelligence (AI) to help us. In 2026 we will investigate options to build AI functionality into the forecasting tool to generate new insights to keep reducing our Scope 3 emissions.
Our customers want to know more about our products' carbon footprint (PCF), and our growing portfolio of detailed, TfS-compliant PCF reports has become a valuable resource.
Creating these reports is time-consuming. So, at the end of 2025 we ran a pilot for a new PCF automation tool at our site in Ribécourt, France. The tool automatically creates a carbon footprint for specific products using manufacturing procurement and production data. As well generating targeted PCFs
to meet specific customer requests, this tool will help us expand our PCF portfolio more quickly. It will also enable us to track Scope 3 GHG emissions in real time, instead of manually collating data once a quarter. While this will initially occur at an individual plant level, our ambition is to integrate the tool across our whole business over the next five years.
An ongoing commitment to product stewardship
One of the most important ways we can support wider sustainability is by minimising or eliminating the use of certain chemicals. The majority of our products are not classified as hazardous, and only a small proportion of what we sell contains hazardous ingredients. However, that proportion means we are, rightly, subject to strict regulations on their use and we provide customers with up-to-date, legally compliant safety sheets for products in all the markets where we operate.
But product safety regulation is regional, complex and changing rapidly. So over the past few years we have strengthened our approach. This includes regular training sessions to help our procurement teams understand key regulation and ensure they ask suppliers the right questions about raw materials.
Innovation
Integrate into decision making and business models
End-market insights
Customer insights
Operational insights
Supplier insights
Responsible
disposal
Product use
Formulation
and production
Manufacture
Raw
materials
We are using data, information and knowledge from across our value chain to generate insights that help us create options for
more sustainable products and services for our customers.
Building deeper relationships for radical collaboration throughout the value chain
We also have a new tool that enables our innovation teams to screen raw materials against regulations to help them make faster, more informed decisions when designing products.
Meanwhile, we continue to improve the way we share information with customers, and this year launched a new customer portal that includes product regulation passports. The passports provide concise information that enables customers to check compliance in multiple geographies, answering many of our most frequently asked questions.
The portal itself is an excellent example of our customer-centric approach. Launched in January 2025, it currently contains our Adhesive Solutions and SVP business product lines, and we intend to add more businesses in 2026. To date, more than 100 customers have downloaded over 1,500 documents and more customers are signing up all the time.
» See Synthomer's customer portal.
Review of the year / Sustainability in focus
Our double materiality assessment
In 2024, we completed a double materiality assessment (DMA) to evaluate both the impact of our operations on people and the planet, and how sustainability issues could affect our financial performance. The process included:
Mapping our value chain and stakeholders to identify a long list of risks and opportunities.
Engaging with key stakeholders - employees, investors, customers, and suppliers - to validate this list.
Using our existing Group risk framework methodology to quantify the financial materiality of those risks and opportunities on our business as well as their likely societal impact.
» More information is available at
Synthomer.com
From this, we identified the topics (shown in the graphic on the right) that are most material to our business at a Group level, along with a list of impacts, risks, and opportunities. The DMA confirmed that most of our Vision 2030 targets aligned with our material priorities.
We are now reviewing future regulatory reporting requirements, including the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and
the UK Sustainability Reporting Standards (UK SRS).
IMPACT MATERIAL
Own workforce Workers in the
value chain
DOUBLE MATERIAL
Climate change
Pollution Business conduct
Synthomer's impact on people and the environment
We will review and revise the DMA and relevant key performance indicators in 2026 to confirm these remain our most material risks and continue to be aligned with our group risk management methodology.
Resource use and circular economy
Product stewardship
FINANCIAL MATERIAL
Financial impact on Synthomer
Material topics
Environmental Social
Governance Entity-specific
* Water and marine resources is identified as material for the Synthomer entities in France due to manufacturing sites with high water stress. On a global level, this impact is not deemed material as it is confined to the sites in France.
Water and marine resources*
Affected communities
Biodiversity and ecosystems
Consumer and end user
NON- MATERIAL
Review of the year / Sustainability in focus
We want to be more than just compliant, though, and are committed to eliminating and reducing the proportion of hazardous ingredients in our products
wherever possible. Our product innovation scorecard commits us to eliminating substances of very high concern (SVHCs) from our portfolio, and today 1.12% of our products contain them at a concentration higher than 0.1%.
Meanwhile, we stopped manufacturing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in 2023. However, we still find traces in some of our raw materials, so a new cross-functional taskforce is developing a screening process that will help us to eliminate them entirely.
We also reached a significant milestone this year in our voluntary programme to eliminate alkylphenol ethoxylates (APEOs) from our products. In September 2025, our Adhesive Solutions division produced its last batch of SUNCRYL™ water-based release coatings containing APEOs in North America. This completes a multi-year initiative to reformulate 17 products across our divisions and means our global product portfolio is now APEO-free.
Steady progress against Vision 2030
We provide more detail on performance against our Vision 2030 targets on pages 41 to 43, but continue to make good progress against many of them.
The broader economic climate has slowed our short-term ability to deliver some of our bigger plans. Due to financial pressures explained in this report on pages 7 to 9 we have constrained our five-year capital investment plan for Scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions reduction and paused the purchase of energy attribution certificates contributing to our Vision 2030 renewable electricity target. While these decisions have affected our short-term progress we successfully met our 2025 objective and remain on track to achieve both our 2030 Scope 1 and 2 science-based target and renewable electricity target.
Nonetheless our sites have continued implementing 'self-help' measures to reduce energy consumption, including installing more energy efficient equipment when old equipment reaches the end of its useful life. Meanwhile, our three sites located in areas of high water stress and with high water use have made good progress in establishing sustainable water management programmes.
We provide more information on our most relevant sustainability issues in our ESG data pack and a series of in-depth insights that are available on our website.
Environment Climate action Water
Waste and pollution
Social
Health and safety in the workplace Workers in the value chain Product safety
Diversity, equity and inclusion Communities
Governance
Business conduct
We provide more information on the work we are doing to understand our climate-related risks and
opportunities in our Climate Action report, summarised on pages 58 to 63. This includes work in 2025 to update our climate-related risk assessments and scenario analysis.
We obtain independent assurance for our ISO management systems and independent verification at a limited assurance level of our Scope 1, 2 and 3 GHG emissions.
We benchmark our progress, and identify areas where we can improve, through disclosures to organisations including CDP, Ecovadis, S&P, London Stock Exchange Group and MSCI.
This year, we maintained our A- 'leadership' level for CDP Climate and continue to work closely with key industry bodies. For more information, see Ratings and Resources on our website.
More information on our approach to sustainability
Other highlights include a recordable injury case rate of 0.15, meaning we have exceeded our 2030 target for
the third consecutive year. We also successfully met our 2025 objectives for both senior management gender diversity and senior leaders from ethnically diverse backgrounds.
» See People in focus on pages 36 to 40.
Looking ahead
Our people should be proud of everything they have achieved in the past five years. It is thanks to their hard work that we are on track to deliver our 2030 targets while building deeper, more collaborative partnerships with our customers. A growing number of customers are asking for our help, and we know we can do more.
We see huge potential for our growth strategy over the coming decade, as long as we work at the right pace with the right knowledge. So an important focus for us in 2026 will be reviewing the way we measure
and communicate the benefits of our products to customers. As we do so, we will continue to work in partnership with customers, suppliers and peers to accelerate progress across our value chain.
STRATEGIC REPORT GOVERNANCE REPORT FINANCIAL STATEMENTS OTHER INFORMATION
Review of the year
Sustainability as a service
Increasing performance
Health & Protection and Performance Materials
Reducing raw materials
Adhesive Solutions
Reducing CO2 emissions
Adhesive Solutions
Our Alcotex™ speciality polyvinyl alcohol (PVOH) grades are helping to make agriculture more sustainable. Our products deliver biodegradable, water-soluble, high-performance film-forming solutions for seed coating and crop protection. We have partnered with key market players for more than 10 years and continue to expand as demand grows for microplastic-free solutions.
Our innovative Plextol™ Recyclear™ adhesive enables labels on HDPE bottles and PP film substrates to be easily removed during recycling, supporting
a more circular economy. The adhesive has been approved by RecyClass, a respected cross-industry initiative
set up to encourage greater plastics circularity in Europe.
We announced a new strategic partnership and supply agreement with our adhesives customer Henkel
in April 2025, helping to commercialise our new CLIMA-branded products. Using our most advanced CLIMA products, Henkel has cut its carbon footprint by 46% - five years ahead of its goal. In November our team won Henkel's 2025 Sustainability Award.
We are committed to working in partnership with our customers to deliver the products and solutions that help them meet their sustainability goals. Here we share a selection of our biggest successes.
Synthomer plc 32 Annual Report 2025
STRATEGIC REPORT GOVERNANCE REPORT FINANCIAL STATEMENTS OTHER INFORMATION
Review of the year / Sustainability as a service
Reducing energy use
Health & Protection and Performance Materials
Reducing waste
Coatings & Construction Solutions
Reducing hazardous materials
Coatings & Construction Solutions
Our new high-performance nitrile butadiene rubber (NBR) - SyNovus™ Lite - has been engineered specifically for ultra-thin gloves. SyNovus™ Lite helps customers lower their product carbon footprint by 14.4% and reduce Scope 3 emissions by 4% compared to its alternatives, without compromising performance.
We have helped one of our largest customers reduce the waste footprint of one of their high-volume disposable hygiene products by 18%. Drawing on our polymer expertise, we were able to modify our polymer resin to produce
a lighter-weight end product while maintaining key performance attributes, including tensile strength.
Many industries, such as medical, filtration and home textiles, are increasingly looking for solutions that do not include per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) while maintaining water repellent properties. Our Sequapel™ 409 product has successfully provided excellent hydrophobicity properties through innovative non-PFAS technology, as well as stability over a wide range of temperatures.
Synthomer plc 33 Annual Report 2025
STRATEGIC REPORT GOVERNANCE REPORT FINANCIAL STATEMENTS OTHER INFORMATION
Review of the year
Innovation in focus: meeting customers' current and future needs
"Thanks to our innovation and technology teams, we are working more closely than ever with our customers to develop and commercialise products with important sustainability benefits."
David Ring
Vice President, Group Innovation
Innovation remains the basis for creating value for our customers and helping them realise their sustainability goals while delivering our growth strategy.
Our innovation and technology teams have had a busy year developing, launching and commercialising products across all our divisions to help customers address existing needs and unlock new value in our end markets. This includes products that help them lower their carbon footprint, eliminate the use of hazardous materials and support a more circular economy. At the same time, we continued to ensure that new and protected products make up at least 20% of our sales volume - the NPP metric - over the long term. This year we reached 23%.
From 2026, we intend to change our innovation key performance indicator to track gross margin (GM) vitality instead of NPP. Tracking gross margin rather than volume is a clearer way of measuring and targeting innovation, and is in line with our strategy to become a more speciality-focused chemicals business. By measuring vitality rather than NPP we can ensure we maintain a healthy innovation pipeline that continues to bring new products and new benefits to market.
We have tracked GM vitality for many years, and in 2025 we delivered 8.2% GM vitality (2024: 7.5%), launching more than 40 new products to market across our three divisions.
Once again, we exceeded our Vision 2030 sustainable products target to have at least 60% of new products with enhanced sustainability benefits. We provide more data on page 41.
Planning for the long term while moving at pace
While innovation is an essential part of how we address specific customer needs, it also plays an important strategic role in helping us anticipate and solve longer-term challenges.
Strengthening our long-term innovation pipeline is a key priority and we took several important steps this year, including appointing a new innovation and technology specialist to help us take a more externally focused, exploratory approach. This supports the work our central scouting team already does to actively track market developments for bio-based, recycled and CO2-based feedstocks. We also worked with external experts to define priority innovation areas to support key growth opportunities and help target our resources accordingly.
Synthomer plc 34 Annual Report 2025
STRATEGIC REPORT GOVERNANCE REPORT FINANCIAL STATEMENTS OTHER INFORMATION
Review of the year / Innovation in focus continued
While it takes time to develop new polymer products to meet market demand, we need to ensure we are agile enough to respond to our customers' rapidly changing needs and maintain competitive advantage. This year our Innovation Taskforce worked with our internal business excellence and continuous improvement team (SynEx) to redesign our full innovation operating model. This involved reviewing every aspect of our internal processes - from how we make strategic innovation decisions, to how we allocate resources, to the metrics we choose to measure progress. Our aim is to create a more agile approach, accelerating the speed at which we deliver more routine innovation projects, while freeing up people's time to design and develop more advanced ideas to support our strategy and help customers meet their own ambitions.
Innovation highlights from our divisions |
Adhesive Solutions |
|
Coatings & Construction Solutions |
|
Health & Protection and Performance Materials |
|
We also established an Innovation Project and Portfolio Management Office, which has piloted a new tactical innovation process to help streamline the way we respond to customer requests for simpler, more routine innovation projects. And we refined some of our innovation governance processes to strengthen decision making, prioritisation and resource allocation.
Accelerating innovation through academic partnerships
One of the best ways we can participate in - and accelerate - long-term innovation is through our academic partnerships. We primarily focus on projects that drive innovation in sustainable polymers, bio-based monomers and green chemistry to complement our existing product portfolio.
In 2025, we launched a three-year collaborative programme with the University of York, supported through a UK Government Prosperity Partnership grant. As well as aiming to drive decarbonisation and defossilisation of speciality polymers, the programme will help train the next generation of synthetic and polymer chemists in key aspects of green chemistry.
Meanwhile, our collaboration with the University of Leeds has helped us develop new high throughput polymerisation capability at our Harlow Technical Centre, which will enable faster screening and help accelerate our innovation projects.
Innovation and sustainability in our divisions
Delivering more sustainable solutions more quickly relies on understanding our customers' current and future needs, and taking action today to make sure we can deliver the products of tomorrow. We have continued to build deeper, more collaborative partnerships with some of our biggest customers this year, with our divisional innovation teams playing a key role. The table below shares a few examples of their work.
Looking ahead
While designing with sustainability in mind is now business as usual, the way we do it will keep evolving, and our central innovation team will continue working closely with our divisional innovation teams to support their needs. In CCS, we are developing a new customer-centric innovation approach to identify key growth areas and ensure we deliver the products our customers need at pace. In AS, we want to strengthen our relationships across the entire value chain so we can accelerate
work on a range of products designed to support electric vehicle manufacturers. In HPPM, we want to continue driving market-leading innovation for our glove customers and develop solutions that support a more circular economy.
Synthomer plc 35 Annual Report 2025
STRATEGIC REPORT GOVERNANCE REPORT FINANCIAL STATEMENTS OTHER INFORMATION
Review of the year
People in focus: steady progress in a challenging year
"I have been struck by our people's commitment to our business and each other - it is thanks to them that we have successfully navigated a challenging year."
Gayla Cowie
Chief Human Resources Officer
Once again, our people have remained focused on helping
us deliver our strategy while we continue to build an inclusive, collaborative culture that celebrates diversity of thought and acts on the views of our employees.
Fostering greater collaboration while supporting wellbeing
We have made good progress in the past five years to create a more inclusive, high-performance culture. What our people have helped us achieve despite ongoing market challenges has shown that we are stronger together and that the best innovation happens when we work collaboratively. This is why this year we adjusted our hybrid working policy to increase the time we spend working together at our sites, offices and laboratories.
This sense of togetherness is particularly important during uncertain times, and we recognise that our cost reduction programme and decision to remove around 250 roles globally has been unsettling.
While this was crucial for maintaining our competitive edge in a very challenging economic landscape, we took a people-first approach, treating affected individuals with empathy and respect and providing as much support as possible.
Throughout the year, we have maintained our focus on employee health and wellbeing, including new online sessions hosted by our Employee Assistance Programme provider on topics such as stress awareness, building resilience, and the power of open conversations to address mental health issues. We also ran well-attended sessions to mark World Mental Health Day and International Stress Awareness week.
Our annual Synthomer Cares week is always a great opportunity for employees to come together. Once again, sites organised local activities, including helping at food banks, while globally, almost 400 employees helped raise money for the medical humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières.
Synthomer plc 36 Annual Report 2025
Review of the year / People in focus continued
Outperformed our annual recordable injury case rate (RCR) target for the third consecutive year
Launched Aspire, our new accelerated talent programme for future senior leaders
Rigorous follow-up on action planning from our 2024 Your Voice survey to improve ways of working
Achieved our short-term gender and ethnic diversity objectives
97% of all employees completed training on our new Code of Conduct
Highlights from 2025
Taking action to respond to our people's views
One of the most important ways we can support our people is by listening to - and acting on - their feedback. Having run our last Your Voice employee engagement survey at the end of 2024, our focus in 2025 was on defining and delivering meaningful actions to address what we heard. To date, we have identified more than 150 actions across the organisation. In Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, we ran 'quick connect' development sessions, giving approximately 100 employees the opportunity to meet with leaders and share career stories. We have rolled out a similar format in other locations, such
as Harlow, UK, Sintra, Portugal, and Marl, Germany, with plans for more during 2026. Globally, we ran a Synthomer University awareness campaign and launched new functional career frameworks in response to employee feedback. We also developed a new change management hub to provide support during change and transformation processes.
We share quarterly progress updates with employees, which include key metrics and examples of progress.
This year, we established a dedicated community of practice to share good examples of Your Voice action planning across the organisation. Both help demonstrate the tangible action we're taking in response to people's feedback.
Board engagement with our employees
Our Board continued their Employee Voice engagement initiative, holding six in-person sessions in France and the UK during 2025.
The Board noted the positive culture and team spirit at these sites and employees said they appreciated the progress we are making on career development. These sessions reinforced the importance of continuous improvement in areas like knowledge sharing and communication, as well aligning priorities and finding ways to make it easier for people to do their jobs.
We focus on the following four priority areas in order to support Synthomer's overall business strategy:
Invest in key capabilities
Ensure simplified and customer-focused processes and systems
Build an environment of talent growth and career development
Embed an inclusive and supportive workplace
Our people priorities
» More information on the Board's engagement with employees and other stakeholders is available on pages 78 to 82.
Continued progress in recognition and performance
We continue to embed our new global approach to employee recognition, including running our second annual Inspire Awards. This year, the programme received around 60 nominations globally, with the three winning teams showcased at our April 2026 Synthomer Leadership Team meeting.
Our broader Star Awards scheme is also available globally and aims to recognise behaviours and achievements that support our strategy. We received more than 700 Star Award nominations over the course of 2025.
Developing a collaborative culture of excellence takes time and our approach continues to mature. We remain focused on supporting good performance and development conversations between employees and managers and embedding our performance management framework to strengthen our talent pipeline and succession planning. While the framework is built on continuous conversations, our more structured mid-year review and summary conversation processes achieved high completion
rates this year, at 82% and 97% respectively.
Review of the year / People in focus continued
Our gender diversity statistics |
All employees Female 912 Male 2,871 Not declared 5 24.1% Total 3,788 female |
Board Female 4 Male 5 Total 9 44.4% female |
Senior management Female 18 Male 33 Total 51 35.3% female |
Good progress against our DE&I goals
Diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) remains a core pillar of Synthomer's strategy, and has changed from project-based initiatives a few years ago to becoming an integral part of what we do. Women now represent 24.1% of our workforce, while our Board is 44.4% female.
We have made good progress towards our Vision 2030 diversity target in the past five years. We met both 2025 objectives, with women representing 35.3% of our senior leadership (2025 target: 33%) and 21.6% of senior leaders from ethnically diverse backgrounds (2025 target: 20%), based on categories in the UK Parker Report.
We provide more information on our Vision 2030 target on page 43. For more on Board-level diversity, see our Nomination Committee report on pages 95 to 97.
While we are pleased with this progress, we need to stay focused on this important topic to meet our Vision 2030 target of women representing 40% of senior leaders. Our focus groups on female representation in manufacturing play an important role here. Initially launched in Europe in 2024, these sessions enable us to hear from female employees about the barriers they face working in traditionally male manufacturing roles. This year we expanded the initiative to include sessions in Asia and the USA, hosted by either our executive sponsor for DE&I or a senior female manufacturing leader. We have heard consistent themes in all regions and have agreed a tangible action plan with our Operations Executive team.
Our DE&I ambassador network and employee resource groups continue to play an integral part in our work.
For example, our cultural diversity group, EMPOWER, celebrates different cultural awareness days and regularly runs unconscious bias training.
Developing our leaders and strengthening our digital skills
We know from Your Voice that our people want a clear, consistent approach to career development. So we have continued building our comprehensive framework of accelerated talent programmes. It starts with Ignite, which is our graduate leadership programme, and includes Elevate, our emerging leader programme.
During 2025, we welcomed the first cohort into our new Aspire programme, which targets future senior leaders. It combines a deeper approach to advanced leadership skills with experiential learning from entrepreneurial challenges.
We have also significantly broadened our Leadership Essentials programme. Open to all leaders across the organisation, this provides a variety of training on different aspects of leadership. Meanwhile, our Leadership Academy provided opportunities to develop skills in areas such as leading change, unconscious bias, giving and receiving feedback and handling difficult conversations.
While the Leadership Academy is already a key part of Synthomer University, we added other Academies to the University during the year, including the Sustainability Academy and DE&I Academy.
We have three DE&I employee resource groups:
ENGENDER - our women's network THRIVE - our LGBTQ+ network EMPOWER - our cultural diversity network
Our employee resource groups
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Synthomer plc published this content on May 07, 2026, and is solely responsible for the information contained herein. Distributed via Public Technologies (PUBT), unedited and unaltered, on May 07, 2026 at 13:35 UTC.
