Kering shifts focus to supply chain with 2025 strategy

Global luxury fashion group Kering has today (25 January) revealed new targets which place a focus on emissions reductions and supply chain sustainability, as part of the next phase of its CSR strategy.


The company – owner of fashion brands such as Alexander McQueen, Gucci and Stella McCartney –  has established quantifiable targets guided by the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The strategy aims to address the environmental impacts across Kering’s supply chain with a view to embedding sustainability at the beginning of the design process.

“More than ever, I am convinced that sustainability can redefine business value and drive future growth,” Kering’s chief executive Francois-Henri Punault said. “As business leaders, we all have a crucial role to play and I worked with the chief executives of our luxury Maisons to embed sustainability across our activities while developing this next important phase of our sustainability strategy.

“Our strategy outlines how we will redesign our business to continue to thrive and prosper sustainably into the future, while at the same time helping to transform the luxury sector and contributing to meet the significant social and environmental challenges of our generation.”

Scaling-up

Coming a day after a new Carbon Trust report called on major brands to treat the supply chain as the next frontier in sustainability, Kering has set several targets to source raw materials and support supplier sustainability. This includes a plan to establish high standards for materials such as precious skins, cashmere and cotton.

2025 targets have been set for 100% traceability of key raw materials, and the creation of a supplier index to ensure the entire supply chain complies with Kering’s values. Other objectives include a strategy to develop an industry leading performance metric system that will measure achievement of the SDGs, and a new supplier platform to offer technical support and training to share best practices.

Kering will further address all supply chain environmental impacts with a goal to reduce at least 40% of its environmental profit and loss (EP&L) accounts, which place a monetary value on the financial costs and benefits generated by the entire company’s environmental impact, both within its own operations and across all of its supply chains. Meanwhile, a science-based approach will be employed to reduce emissions from Kering’s business activities by 50% in scope 1, 2 and 3 by 2025.

Kering vows to create an open-sourced tool to assess products, which it hopes will help integrate sustainability into design. The French company also aims to promote sustainable design and minimise the environmental impact of products at every stage, from sourcing, manufacturing and transport to consumer use.

“It is through catalysing innovation that we will be able to go beyond incremental improvements and implement the transformational changes that are necessary to be truly sustainable in our business and as an industry,” Kering’s chief sustainability officer Marie-Claire Daveu said.

“We will continue to open-source our solutions and approaches to support the scaling up of sustainability in the luxury sector, while sharing every 3 years the progress we have made.”

Sustainable opulence

Kering has made significant improvements over the last few years as it strives for the highest environmental standards, as explained by the firm’s sustainability director Michael Beutler in an exclusive interview with edie.

Kering has recently introduced a new aspect to its long-standing partnership with New York’s The New School’s Parsons School of Design, which will add new modules to the school’s fashion programme tailored to developing sustainability within the fashion sector.

The company was consulted on the initial draft of the Natural Capital Protocol, which offers businesses a standardised framework to measure impacts on natural assets, raw materials and natural infrastructure.

Kering has claimed that the fashion industry urgently needs to improve its supply chain resiliency as climate change inevitably starts to impact the production of vital raw materials like cotton, leather and silk. British fashion designer Stella McCartney – whose fashion company is owned by Kering – recently called on clothing manufacturers to take more responsibility for the environmental impact of the products they produce and stop the “unglamorous” sourcing of unsustainable and unethical products.

George Ogleby

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