Better Cotton to trial tracing technologies
The Better Cotton platform is piloting traceability technologies from Retraced, TextileGenesis, Haelixa and Tailorlux within India’s cotton supply chains to determine the best way to boost transparency across cotton supply chains.
Conducted in collaboration with companies including C&A, Marks & Spencer, Target, and Walmart, the project will see each technology track cotton as it moves throughout the supplier networks of participating brands and retailers.
This will build on Better Cotton’s work to revise its Chain of Custody (CoC) model and provide an opportunity to test advanced solutions ahead of offering traceability at a limited scale this year.
Both digital and physical traceability solutions are being deployed in discrete cotton supply chains to assess their performance, with the results set to inform the scaled direction of Better Cotton’s traceability programme. Digital traceability is being provided by leading platforms, Retraced and TextileGenesis. Better Cotton is also trialling two additive tracers, Haelixa and Tailorlux, before determining the potential of each solution.
There are over one million Better Cotton farmers in India, and it is one of the largest producers of Better Cotton globally. However, domestic supply chains are amongst the most complex in the world and are far more fragmented than in other regions.
Until now, it has been difficult to get a holistic view of traceability in the supply chain. Better Cotton’s new traceability system will need to align and eventually go beyond the capabilities of existing traceability solutions to provide full end-to-end visibility.
This pilot will expand upon Better Cotton’s Chain of Custody framework that incorporates the concept of “mass balance” – a widely-used volume-tracking system. Mass balance allows Better Cotton to be substituted or mixed with conventional cotton by traders or spinners along the supply chain while ensuring that the amount of Better Cotton sold never exceeds the amount of Better Cotton produced. The new traceability framework will allow greater flexibility and visibility of the physical flow of cotton through supply chains as our network grows.
Alan McClay, CEO of Better Cotton said: “After consulting with our members across the supply chain and getting to grips with their needs and pain points, we’ve taken those learnings and tested solutions in India to bring traceable Better Cotton to life. What we’ve found is helping us to prepare to offer a scalable new system to our members as early as this year. Not only will this benefit our members, but it will benefit farmers who implement sustainable agricultural practices by ensuring they can continue to access increasingly regulated markets.”
In the 2020-21 cotton season, 2.9 million farmers in 26 countries received training on sustainable farming practices. A fifth of the world’s cotton is now grown under the Better Cotton Standard, according to the association.
For more on how these traceability systems work, see From tracing to closing the loop.
