Chanel Leads Beauty Industry Consortium Aiming to Enhance Traceability
PARIS — A consortium of 15 cosmetics-makers, called the Traceability Alliance for Sustainable Cosmetics, or TRASCE, has been formed to enhance the beauty industry’s traceability.
The group was initiated by Chanel and federates Albéa, Groupe Clarins, Cosfibel powered by GPA Global, Dior, the Estée Lauder Cos., L’Occitane en Provence, L’Oréal, Merck, Neyret, Nuxe, Pochet Group, Sensient, Shiseido and Sisley.
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The Fédération des Entreprises de la Beauté is an official sponsor of TRASCE.
The alliance comes together following recent health, climactic and geopolitical events, which have caused supply-chain disruptions. Further, regulations at home and abroad are becoming stricter.
“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.
Its aim is also to address traceability at scale, and so the consortium’s founding members will work together to map their supply chains across the whole value chain — ingredients or components used, their origins, supplier activities, places of transformation and names of supplier — on one digital platform, Transparency-One, an ISN company. Every supplier is guaranteed the ownership, security and confidentiality of the data they share on it.
“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,” TRASCE said.
The group sets out to respond to three main industry challenges by strengthening the collective understanding of supply chains in the cosmetics industry, assessing the related social and environmental risks, and determining the actions needed to support suppliers in their transition.
Chanel understood the need for a collective response to the industry’s challenges.
“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.”
“Through shared digital tools and close collaboration, we have an opportunity to move the needle in transparency and elevate how we source responsibly, with attention to potential impacts on people and the environment,” said Meghan Ryan, executive director of responsible sourcing at the Estée Lauder Cos.
Karl Hensen, quality director surface solutions at Merck, said the initiative is strong due to the diversity of brands and suppliers it culls.
“This joint commitment is a real asset,” he said. “We are convinced of the need to align the industry on a single traceability tool, and to implement a common method. 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 multistakeholder dialog is essential to promote the objectives within the TRASCE consortium as well as contributing to Merck’s overall sustainability strategy.”
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