Tesco, the UK’s largest retailer, has appointed Anthesis Group to develop and manage a single online sustainability community spanning the retailer’s supply base.
The Tesco Supplier Network will help Tesco, its suppliers and producers to drive sustainability across their businesses by fostering collaboration and innovation among them. The site will help 5,000 members to interact directly with other suppliers, producers and Tesco, sharing the challenges and opportunities of delivering sustainable goods and services to the retailer. It will bring together the existing supplier networks; the Tesco Producer Network, which serves fresh food producers, and the Tesco Knowledge Hub, which serves branded manufacturing and processing suppliers.
Anthesis is will provide a tailor-made software solution to integrate the existing networks and improve functionality. It also has brought together a network of experts in product and supply chain sustainability to advise site members. Six specialist community managers from Tesco and Anthesis will work behind the scenes to identify new case studies and link members together to solve challenges and find lasting solutions. They will do this through webinars, discussion forums, videos, surveys, e-learning modules and social media feeds.
Members will be able to connect directly to Tesco teams, learn more about Tesco’s strategy and find peers facing similar sustainability challenges at different product lifecycle stages, or on issues such as energy or food waste. The site will also help members to harness shared buying power and innovation resources.
The Tesco Supplier Network is set to launch in January 2015.
Tesco recently joined several of the world’s leading retailers, including Target, Walmart, C&A, Marks & Spencer, IKEA, and H&M, in signing RSN's Cotton Pledge, committing to not use Uzbek cotton harvested with forced labor in their products. Markets for Uzbek cotton sourced with forced labor continue to diminish as consumers become more aware of the egregious human rights violations that occur during the Uzbek cotton harvest.
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Founder & Principal Consultant, Hower Impact
Mike Hower is the founder of Hower Impact — a boutique consultancy delivering best-in-class strategic communication advisory and support for corporate sustainability, ESG and climate tech.
Published Nov 23, 2014 1am EST / 10pm PST / 6am GMT / 7am CET