Zero hour – towards a sustainable supply chain

For Dr Andrew Hudson, global technical manager at SGS, the past two years have been a time of great challenge and change, as he leads efforts to transform and improve the leather industry’s use of raw materials.

“One of the things we’ve been doing is trying to educate the supply chain to a greater degree,” he says. Given that Hudson’s work at SGS involves the leather supply chain at a number of different levels, that means a lot of work.

“A lot of our important customers are the brands and retailers, so obviously they’re instrumental in specifying what’s required. We’ve been working at the retail and brand ends to make sure they understand the implication of what we’re trying to specify. Alongside that, we’re also working at the tanning end to make sure they can meet the requirements of the brand.”

In this way, SGS is well positioned as a third-party organisation to try to act as a honest broker between the various parts of the supply chain.

“We’re not there trying to help the tannery; we’re not there to help the brand; we’re there to help everybody,” he says. In Hudson’s view, leather brands and retailers are constantly looking for ways to improve their offering, something every business has to do in order to stay competitive. On the other hand, there sits the tannery. “I do sympathise with them as they get squeezed with high raw material prices and the pressure to reduce finished leather prices – it becomes more difficult to cost-effectively produce the product at the quality levels required by the brands and retailers,” he explains.

And while brands and retailers are certainly taking seriously the need to adapt their processes and demands in the correct way – “And not just say ‘we conform’ but actually put the mechanisms in place to allow that to be achieved,” says Hudson – for tanneries, the issue is a little more complicated.

“They’ve got the materials and restricted substance list but how can they be expected to effectively manage that when they’re also still trying to meet performance requirements, reduce their costs and so forth,”adds Hudson.

It’s in this gap that SGS is now working to reconcile the two elements. On the one side, helping to support the brands and retailers, and advising them on how to go forward; on the other hand, creating the right packages, solutions and products to be able to either train or guide the tanneries and the mills through that process.

In practice, that takes several forms; not least, focusing on the gradual removal of hazardous chemicals from the manufacturing process across the board.

Leaky discharge

The Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemicals (ZDHC) campaign has its genesis in the Greenpeace Detox campaign, when, in 2011, the environmental group published a ‘dirty laundry’ list, effectively naming and shaming a number of brands and their procurement practices in China.

It’s a process that has been gaining momentum for some years and is now reaching critical mass. With the detox requirement in place, the question for shoe manufacturers then became simple: how on earth do we comply?

“We’re now at a stage where ZDHC has got an MRSL list,” Hudson says. “Many brands are working together trying to achieve the same thing, which has to be positive.” And the tanneries? “It’s the same message, but then the tanneries often say ‘Well okay, that’s great. We know what we’ve got in terms of product list, but how do we manage that while we’re still trying to meet the performance requirements and reduce our costs?’.”

To answer this, Hudson is part of SGS’s efforts to develop a training package to direct the tanneries on how to comply with the latest guidelines. “So, it’s not simply a question of saying ‘This is what your need to achieve.’ It’s saying, ‘There are practical steps that can be taken, this is how you can build up a chemical inventory, this is how you can assign individual risk to each chemical.’ It’s those practical steps that we’ve been developing as a direct response in order to enable the tanneries to meet the requirements of the final brand,” he says.

There are, of course, fears that the new standards regime will require a serious investment in new systems and processes by tanneries. Hudson, though, believes most well-run tanneries will require more of a tweak than an overhaul. “It is a small tweak that drastically increases what they can achieve,” he says.

“As an example, take the chemical inventory approach. It might only involve one day of training; it’s a relatively small investment from the tannery’s perspective but they then have an individual, or two or three individuals, that have been trained, and can then go back into their factory and say ‘Okay, now this is what we need to do. We need to sit down and, as a starting point, we can make a catalogue of the chemicals coming in to the tannery. We can then use this practically to work on a process of continuous improvement across our product range.’ With that in mind, Hudson believes that tanneries can then reach the required standard of compliance relatively quickly and at a low investment cost.

The tanneries can then start working towards this chemical compliance requirement. It is here that the real benefits can be achieved throughout the supply chain. “The further you go back in the chain, the cheaper it becomes and this is a really important message,” he says.

“Rather than testing every product and every batch that comes out of the tannery, they just need to make sure that what they put in is the best or the most appropriate chemical recipe. By doing that, their testing costs significantly reduce. It is a cost saver but it’s difficult sometimes for the tanneries to see that.”

Chemical issues

Of course, for many involved in leather production, the chemical issues are well known. Certainly, concerns over chromium VI are nothing new and given that 80% of leathers are chrome-tanned, the question for many manufacturers is whether they are going to be able to move away from chrome tanning in the short to medium term?

Hudson is sceptical. “Well, we could but it probably won’t happen,” he says. “Chromium tanning is the ‘standard’ tanning process and has many advantages that are not easily reproduced with other tanning systems.” 

As Hudson points out, most in the industry understand the issues: chromium VI’s persistence is related to the chemical recipe. And while mitigating the risk is straightforward, “The reality is we’re still seeing, relatively speaking, high rates of chromium VI,” Hudson explains. “If I was a technologist in a brand buying leather products and I had a limited budget, my almost total focus would initially be on chromium VI.”

However, Hudson’s work across the world has given him a clear view of the progress that has been made so far. He describes it as “patchy”.

“In terms of the chemistry of moving away from chrome tanning, if you take the view that the only way to avoid chromium VI is to not put chromium III in, then I know one large retailer that has exclusively forbidden chrome-tanned leathers. But in terms of modern chemistries, I’ve not personally seen any that I think are in the short-to-medium term going to replace chromium III.”

Costs and testing

For Hudson, and the companies he serves, the issue will ultimately come down to the bottom line. And while he accepts there has been a huge increase in the cost of testing, with more cost surrounding product compliance testing, one of the things that SGS has focused on is the concept of tier testing.

It’s a simple concept for tannery and manufacturer to agree on, he says. “You may be producing this lovely brown tan leather; you might be selling the same SKU or product to five different brands. Now each of those brands wants you to test it. You’re paying effectively for five lots of tests, and what we’re championing is the idea that the product is tested correctly and then we can find the mechanism by which all five brands can accept the same test results.”

Under this system, a brand can then go on to an approved web-based platform, and check that product has been tested; for example, in the past 12 months, to the particular requirement of the brand. All of the information would then be held on a database.

“It’s almost like a pick and mix of products that have been pre-approved; it is a repository of approved products,” Hudson explains. “What this means is that you’re not going through the design and product selection process, and then worrying about the products failing its tests two months before it’s supposed to be in your store.”

Control issues

With this ‘Tiered Testing’ system, brands can then take more control over their procurement and supply chain processes, safe in the knowledge that the product has passed. In addition, it helps the tannery by not having to test the same product five times. “So we’re trying to reduce the cost and, by doing that, you’re preventing problems from entering the supply chain and actually giving the benefit of being able to do more tests or a broader range of tests,” Hudson says. “Rather than just doing five tests five times, you could do ten tests once; so you’re increasing your compliance but reducing your costs. So that’s the kind of approach that we’re absolutely working towards with our global customers.”