PARIS — A consortium of 15 cosmetics-makers, called the Traceability Alliance for Sustainable Cosmetics, or TRASCE, has been formed to reinforce the wonder 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. 

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 have gotten stricter.

“In light of this, it has turn out to be essential to raised 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 press release.

Its aim can also be to handle traceability at scale, and so the consortium’s founding members will work together to map their supply chains across the entire 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 info they share on it.

“Within the long term, the consortium goals to develop a collective approach to the chance evaluation of social and environmental risks in supply chains, to interpret the info collected and define common progress plans,” TRASCE said. 

The group sets out to answer three most important industry challenges by strengthening the collective understanding of supply chains within the cosmetics industry, assessing the related social and environmental risks, and determining the actions needed to support suppliers of their transition.

Chanel understood the necessity for a collective response to the industry’s challenges.

“The essential and demanding work of mapping our supply chains carried out in recent times has allowed us to know the most important limits of the exercise,” said Julien Garry, international director of purchasing and packaging innovation development at ChanelParfums Beauté, within the statement.

“It is usually quite difficult for a single client to persuade distant tier suppliers to commit to this process, once we don’t exchange directly with them or once they don’t meet the identical regulatory requirements,” he continued. “Based on this statement, 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 shut collaboration, now we have a possibility to maneuver 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 on the Estée Lauder Cos.

Karl Hensen, quality director surface solutions at Merck, said the initiative is robust as a result of the variety of brands and suppliers it culls.

“This joint commitment is an actual asset,” he said. “We’re convinced of the necessity to align the industry on a single traceability tool, and to implement a typical method. By doing so, TRASCE could even act as a job model for other industries, which face the identical challenges regarding supply-chain transparency. The harmonization and multistakeholder dialog is important to advertise the objectives inside the TRASCE consortium in addition to contributing to Merck’s overall sustainability strategy.”