Supply chain News and trends

Duas Rodas is expanding the number of ingredients in its portfolio with Fair for Life Certification (FFL), which ensures that “items meet specific environmental management criteria and ensure full traceability of the raw material.” The company now provides FFL-certified South American staples such as yerba mate, acai, guarana and acerola, which are produced at its manufacturing units in Brazil.

Successful FFL certification requires producers to ensure that 80% of their products come from Fair Trade certified sources. Products displaying the FFL label are guaranteed to have come from environmentally friendly processes practiced by fairly-paid farmers across a transparent, traceable supply chain.  

The company hopes that this certification will provide further transparency and traceability of its production chain and strengthen relationships with the communities of farmers who produce the raw materials.

“With Fair for Life, we will strengthen our purpose to contribute to social and environmental progress and improve the global food trade for a system beneficial to all parties involved,” says Rosemeri Francener, international business director at Duas Rodas.

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The European Cocoa Association (ECA) and the Association of Chocolate, Biscuit and Confectionery Industries of Europe (CAOBISCO) are on track to deliver access to cocoa marketing agencies’ farming data that the Associations’ Members have collected over the years.

According to the organizations, this data collection effort should feed into a combined database owned and driven by producing countries, in compliance with EU and national data privacy legislation, to achieve a robust nationwide traceability system.

Speaking to FoodIngedientsFirst, Christiaan Prins, chairman of the European Cocoa Association Sustainability Working Group, says farm data collection is crucial to building a sustainable cocoa supply chain. 

“Understanding where cocoa is farmed is a precondition to prevent cocoa from being sourced from protected or deforested areas. In addition, farm data allows companies to support cocoa farmers with tailor-made development plans for their farms. Combining the data from different companies with cocoa origin government-owned data will greatly add to the transparency of the cocoa supply chain.”

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In a successful proof of concept in Indonesia, Unilever applied GreenToken to sustainably source more than 188,000 tons of oil palm fruit. SAP and Unilever are using a pilot of the GreenToken by SAP solution to further increase traceability and transparency in Unilever’s global palm oil supply chain. The tool enabled Golden Agri-Resources and other suppliers from whom Unilever sources to create tokens that mirror the material flow of the palm oil throughout the supply chain and capture the unique attributes linked to the oil’s origin.

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Climate change has been getting a lot of attention recently, and for good reason. The latest science shows the risk is manifesting faster and it’s not just fires and floods causing problems. A changing climate will gradually and increasingly impact us all. Science also tells us now is the time to take action for future generations and to ensure business resilience.

This is why Treasury Wine Estates has set an ambitious target of net zero emissions (Scope 1 and 2) by 2030. With 70% of these emissions generated from electricity, we have our sights on achieving 100% renewable electricity across our entire operations by 2024. 

Targets are important for transparency and accountability. But how you achieve those goals is just as valuable.

As an industry with a significant agricultural footprint, there are three key areas wine producers can act on together to support the transition to a low-carbon future.

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Lever Style is a global company that offers a range of services for apparel design, development and manufacturing to some of the world’s largest apparel brands such as Stitch Fix, Rag & Bone, Paul Smith, Hugo Boss, Theory, Fila and many more. 

With such diverse international clientele, quality and sustainability of their products were key priorities. Moreover, with more brands needing to prove the origins of their products, Lever Style wanted to stay ahead of the curve and provide this transparency to the brands they supply to.

However, with over 70 manufacturing and supplier relationships across Asia, this wasn’t an easy or straightforward task. Lever Style were also manually managing their partner data through various ERP, PLM systems and Microsoft Excel which was time-consuming and difficult to consolidate information across various departments.

Download this case study to learn how Serai’s Traceability and Visibility solutions helped digitise Lever Style’s vast amount of supply chain data, and empowered them with the insights to know what exactly is happening at every stage of their supply chain.

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The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is to investigate the prevalence and impact of greenwashing in the fashion sector, as it looks to create greater transparency over sustainability claims.  

It follows the launch of the body’s ‘Green Claims Code’, which – following industry feedback to sharpen the guide’s focus – poses six questions to stakeholders to ensure they avoid vague or deceitful language surrounding their marketing.  

“Our work so far indicates that there could be issues with greenwashing in the fashion sector and that is why we’ve prioritised this area for further investigation,” noted Cecilia Parker Aranha, the authority’s director of consumer protection. 

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Décor and retraced aim to aid fashion's biggest players to build transparent supply chains.

The partnership is building a chain-of-custody traceability tool that provides retailers and brands visibility and transparency into supply chain and material origin, including the ability to retrieve all relevant documents needed to prove fiber provenance. These parties will create an enterprise-scale platform solution that helps relevant supply chain stakeholders trace and collect the verified documentation needed for risk assessment, reporting, and compliance management.

Michael Cai, Director of Operations & Supply Chain of Décor, calls this the "next evolution in supply chain management."

"We see significant potential

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In order to mitigate such risks, leading corporates and financial institutions globally have implemented policies and processes that drive their relationships with the companies from which they supply, in which they invest, with which they partner, etc. They want to reduce their blind spots and go into relationships with clients or counter-parties or suppliers with their eyes fully open.

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With 420 million hectares of forest cover lost in the past 30 years, the debate on deforestation and traceability in the cocoa supply chain took up the last day of the ECA Cocoa Forum 2022, held in Rome.
While the forthcoming European Union regulation is designed to protect citizens with a guarantee that the products they buy are not contributing to destroying forests around the world, the cocoa sector is well aware that it has to become more transparent in the whole of its supply change, with strict traceability linking a plot of land from where the cocoa beans originate from.

New due diligence rules imposed by the EU will be applicable to all operators, and delegates heard discussions are ongoing with individual countries including Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana, the two biggest cocoa producers, to create a benchmark system within the legal framework of their governments.

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Gen Z population wants brands to prove their sustainability claims, while global regulators now require transparency across all supply chain practice
It’s no secret that supply chain delays and issues have been in the news over the last few months. Supply chains are complicated, and many recent complexities have arisen from a lack of visibility in a highly complex process that involves many stages and stakeholders. 

Brands across the globe have already come to realize that increasing visibility into their supply chains reduces said complexities, in addition to offering major business benefits. Namely, a visible supply chain appeals to a host of new customers in Generation Z (Gen Z) that are putting their wallet where their passions are and investing in brands that represent change. 

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Investors should know how sustainable an investment actually is and be able to understand on what basis the corresponding assessment is based.

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Theppadungporn Coconut Company (TCC) — a third-generation, family-owned company that, over the past half-century, has grown into one of Thailand’s leading exporters of popular coconut products including coconut milk, coconut water and more to the United States and dozens of other countries — was confident that its suppliers weren’t using monkey labor. As it turned out, just stating that was not enough — the company had to be able to prove it.

“When we were accused of using monkey labor, we realized that we have to be more transparent — to ensure and show that there is no monkey labor in our supply chain,” Teetiphun Theppadungporn, International Marketing and Sales Manager at TCC, told Sustainable Brands™. He’s referring to a 2019 investigation from PETA Asia, which alleged that one farm producing coconut milk for TCC’s Chaokoh brand was using monkey labor.

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Gildan Activewear has unveiled new environmental and social sustainability targets, with the firm keen to reduce its carbon emissions, boost its use of ‘preferred fibres’, and better support workers and their communities by 2030.

The company’s strategy comprises five pillars: climate, energy and water; circularity; human capital management; long-term value creation; and transparency and disclosure.

“This next generation strategy will push us to deliver even stronger ESG performance and continue to reinforce Gildan as a leading ethical, sustainable, and efficient apparel company,” said Glenn Chamandy, the business’ president and CEO.

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Over the past 2 years, the risks and shortfalls in our global supply chains have been front and center in presidential briefing rooms, company boardrooms, and even family dining rooms. Supply chains are now recognized as central to business survival, success, and growth, rather than an opportunity to just reduce costs. 

As we head into to 2022, with rampant uncertainty and rapid change due to the Covid-19 variants and other market issues, what can we expect for the next 12 months?

It comes down to 4 main themes. Resiliency, Sustainability, Visibility and Technology.

Resiliency – As supply chain risks continue to flare up Sustainability is the challenge of the 2020s Visibility drives resiliency and sustainability  Technology provides the data and tools
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One of today’s trending topics in sustainable business is transparency. After decades of eroding consumer confidence in corporations, it is no longer acceptable for businesses to make baseless claims about the quality, safety and origin of products. Consumers are demanding more transparency in supply chains; they don’t just want to know you make a quality product, they want to know you make a quality product with quality components. They want to know where the product comes from and how it was produced.

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