Global ingredients marketplace TraceGains has made strategic partnerships with sustainability champions DitchCarbon, HowGood, Sedex, and Sustained Impact.
DitchCarbon provides AI-driven emissions intelligence for businesses; HowGood has the world’s largest database on sustainable food and helps brands improve their environmental and social impact; Sedex is an online system that allows suppliers to maintain data on ethical and responsible practices; and Sustained Impact offers food and beverage companies environmental intelligence software to help reduce their impact.
TraceGains said the new collaborations have helped it establish a new benchmark in ESG readiness and compliance, significantly elevating the visibility and manageability of ESG efforts across the worldwide supply chain. They also contribute to its delivery of a state-of-the-art, cost-effective solution that seamlessly integrates into brands’ sourcing, compliance, and product development workflows, it said.
The move comes after TraceGains research found that most food and beverage brands, including bakeries, had a strong desire to embrace more sustainable practices across their value chain. Results from a survey, which were published in TraceGains’ 2023 report entitled ‘State of ESG Compliance for the Food and Beverage Industry’, had 64% of brands acknowledging the growing importance of delivering on ESG-compliance despite the challenges associated.
Furthermore, 50% of all respondents said they’d be willing to cease production on a particular line if it could not be produced in accordance with ESG objectives. This, noted TraceGains, underscored the shift happening in the industry as many brands showed they were ‘ready to walk the talk’.
“In July, we’ll launch the first of many integrated solutions on our platform that address a wide range of ESG-related needs using datasets mapped to our global supply chain network of more than 550,000 ingredients and 80,000 supplier locations,” commented Greg Heartman, VP of product management at TraceGains. “It’s an exciting time for our clients because they’ll gain immediate access to the world’s most trusted and comprehensive ESG assessments from specialised global experts assessing and measuring supply chains’ carbon emissions, deforestation, ethical labor, and sustainability.
“Built on the same robust foundation as our TraceGains network, these new solutions reflect our ongoing commitment to continuously improve and create value for our customers,” said Heartman, adding “this initial release is just the beginning of what the market can expect to see from us”.
The new partnerships sees TraceGains build on its long-established platform intelligence capabilities to aggregate and map ESG environmental data onto supply chains, down to the ingredient and location level. This provides companies worldwide with dependable, comprehensive insights and benchmarks to streamline compliance and product development. Companies are able to effortlessly assess and address ESG standards and goals, armed with pre-loaded, standardised data for immediate use upon joining the network, noted the Colorado-based firm.
Last October, TraceGains launched its new Sales Hub app, which is said was designed to empower suppliers to better promote their products to the global food and drink industry. Three months later it acquired NutriCalc, inheriting the Barnstaple-based firm’s nutritional calculation and labelling software to further enrich the offerings of its ingredients platform.
Meanwhille, TraceGains’ latest report into R&D and product innovation tipped 2024 to be a big year for NPD at food brands with more than three quarters (76%) of survey respondents planning investments, up 12% from the previous year.
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