Beauty giants create consortium for ingredient and packaging traceability

25 Jan 2024 --- Chanel initiates the Traceability Alliance for Sustainable Cosmetics (TRASCE) with 15 cosmetics makers, such as Dior and Estée Lauder, to enhance traceability in the beauty industry’s ingredient and packaging supply chains.

Other members of the consortium include L’Oréal, Albéa, L’Occitane en Provence, Clarins, Nuxe, Shiseido, Cosfibel powered by GPA Global, Merck, Neyret, Pochet Group, Sensient and Sisley.

The alliance was reportedly inspired by recent health and geopolitical events, which caused supply-chain disruptions. TRASCE is said to aid in strengthening the understanding of the supply chains, assessing the related social and environmental risks and determining the necessary actions for standard progress plans.

Gilles Swyngedauw, vice president of corporate social responsibility and product sustainability at Albéa Cosmetics Fragrance, says: “Cosmetics packaging will have to revolutionize in the years to come. We’ve been working on these issues for years. As a global player in the sector, it soon became clear to us that we needed to create a common methodology to harmonize needs across the industry and achieve our goals by involving as many stakeholders as possible.”

Tracking supply chains
The alliance will map its supply chains to address traceability at scale. This includes logging ingredients or components used, their origins, supplier activities, places of transformation and names of suppliers. 

Dior and other beauty brands collaborate to track cosmetic ingredients and packaging. “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,” explains Meghan Ryan, executive director of Responsible Sourcing at Estée Lauder.

Product data will be tracked on the digital platform Transparency-One, where the company says every supplier is guaranteed the ownership, security and confidentiality of the data they share. Transparency-One was previously used in other sectors, such as the food and automotive industries.

Julien Garry, international director of Purchasing and Packaging Innovation Development at Chanel Parfums Beauté, said in a statement: “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.”

“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. 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.”

A lack of traceability can also lead to counterfeit products. Personal Care Insights previously reported on data from the European Union Intellectual Property Office suggesting the cosmetics industry lost €3 billion (US$3.26 billion) due to counterfeit products.

By Sabine Waldeck