Chanel has taken the lead in forming a consortium named the Traceability Alliance for Sustainable Cosmetics (TRASCE), consisting of 15 renowned cosmetics manufacturers, including Groupe Clarins, Dior, Estée Lauder Cos., L’Occitane, L’Oréal, Merck, Nuxe, Shiseido, and Sisley. TRASCE aims to enhance traceability within the beauty industry.
The establishment of the consortium comes in response to recent disruptive events in supply chains, including health crises, climate-related incidents, and geopolitical challenges. Additionally, regulatory requirements at both domestic and international levels are becoming 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,” TRASCE said in a statement.
One of the primary objectives of TRASCE is to address traceability comprehensively. The founding members of the consortium will collaborate to map their supply chains across the entire value chain, including the identification of ingredients or components used, their origins, supplier activities, places of transformation, and supplier names.
This mapping will be accomplished using Transparency-One, a digital platform provided by ISN company, ensuring data ownership, security, and confidentiality for every participating supplier.
In the long term, TRASCE aims to develop a collective approach to analysing social and environmental risks within supply chains, interpreting the collected data, and defining shared plans for progress. The consortium intends to tackle three key industry challenges: enhancing the collective understanding of cosmetics industry supply chains, assessing associated social and environmental risks, and determining the necessary actions to support suppliers in their transition towards more sustainable practices.
“The essential and demanding work of mapping our supply chains carried out in recent years has allowed us to understand the main limits of the exercise,” said Julien Garry, international director of purchasing and packaging innovation development at ChanelParfums Beauté, in the statement.
“It is sometimes quite difficult for a single client to convince distant tier suppliers to commit to this process when we do not exchange directly with them or when they do not meet the same regulatory requirements,” he continued. “Based on this observation, we proposed that the actors of the sector join forces to trace our supply chains as far and as quickly as possible.”
Meghan Ryan, Executive Director of Responsible Sourcing at Estée Lauder Cos., emphasised the potential for shared digital tools and close collaboration to enhance transparency and responsible sourcing practices, considering their impact on people and the environment.
