TRACING SUPPLY CHAINS, AN OPPORTUNITY TO ADVANCE SUSTAINABILITY AT SCALE

The cosmetics industry consists of numerous complex and multi-tiered supply chains. Gaining deeper knowledge of the sector's supply chains has become essential to better understand and mitigate risks, enhance resiliency, and improve environmental and social sustainability. The unprecedented health, climatic and geopolitical events of recent years, have been revealing that complexity, causing supply chains disruptions. In addition, local and international regulations are becoming increasingly more stringent. In light of this, it has become essential to better understand the sector's supply chains, mitigate the associated risks and support their transition towards a more sustainable and resilient model.

ENABLING COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE AROUND TRACEABILITY APPROACHES IN THE COSMETICS SECTOR

While different individual traceability initiatives have emerged in recent years, the TRASCE consortium was formed to address traceability at scale. The founding members have committed to working collectively to map their supply chains across the entire value chain on a common digital platform, Transparency-One, an ISN Company.

In the long-term the consortium aims to develop a collective approach to the risk analysis of social and environmental risks in supply chains, to interpret the data collected and define common progress plans.

In this respect, TRASCE will help respond to three fundamental challenges for the industry by strengthening the collective understanding of the cosmetics industry supply chains, assessing the related social and environmental risks and determining the necessary actions to support suppliers in their transition

THE POWER OF COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE AT THE SERVICE OF THE SUSTAINABILITY OF COSMETIC PRODUCTS

“As a key supplier of cosmetic ingredients, we are delighted to be a founding member of the TRASCE consortium. This initiative is powerful thanks to the diversity of brands and suppliers it brings together; this joint commitment is a real asset. We are convinced of the need to align the industry on a single traceability tool, and to implement a common methodology. By doing so TRASCE could even act as a role model for other industries, which face the same challenges regarding supply chain transparency. The harmonization and multi-stakeholder dialogue is essential to promote the objectives within the TRASCE consortium as well as contributing to our overall sustainability strategy.” – Karl Hensen, Quality Director & Head of Sustainability Surface Solutions at Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany

TRANSPARENCY-ONE, A REFERENCE PARTNER TO DEPLOY THIS AMBITIOUS PROJECT

Ingredients or components used, origins, supplier activities and places of transformation, names of suppliers: the Transparency-One platform guarantees each supplier the ownership, security and confidentiality of the data they share. Transparency-One has proven itself in other sectors of activity, such as the food and automotive industries, with the deployment of large-scale traceability approaches,