Sustainable Business

Supply Chain Resource Data 2/3 The increasingly complexity of manufactured products now makes it almost impossible to understand the value of materials in a supply chain, presenting real resource risks for businesses as climate pressures take hold. Volatile commodity markets mean that if a specific material suddenly increases in price, or has very limited supply, this can accelerate up the supply chain and cause production processes to be put on hold with potential devastating consequences. This was highlighted in 2011 when Apple was badly hit by the consequences of the Japanese tsunami. A quarter of its iPad components are not only made in Japan, but are hard to source elsewhere. With production lines down for several weeks, the company saw its share price drop by 6% in a fortnight. While natural disasters like tsunamis are obviously hard to predict, other supply chain trends should, in theory, be easier to map, especially around the supply of rare earth metals and minerals. But a lack of robust data and access to it - are hampering efforts. The pressing issue of data was discussed in some detail earlier this year, when two government bodies - the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) and the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS) - launched their Resource Dashboard, at an event hosted by the Knowledge Transfer Network for Environmental Sustainability (ESKTN). The dashboard, which is a key output of the Government's Resource Security Action Plan, is a business tool that aims to define in greater detail how resource security links to critical materials supply. In order to draw up a mitigation strategy, manufacturers and their supply chains need to make informed decisions on material and product security. For instance, what components contain specific elements, and how do they arrive in the final product? What are the consequences of restricted raw material supply? Future technology developments may help make a product more sustainable and cheaper to produce, but are there other demands on the same materials? To be able to answer such questions, companies need reliable information and statistics to draw on, and for that data to be readily accessible - either in the public domain or from relevant stakeholders. However according to some experts, such data is sorely lacking - not least because of the relentless pace of change society is experiencing. According to the British Geological Survey's head of science for minerals and waste Andrew Bloodworth, global supply chains are drawing on more and more rare earth elements to feed demand for smarter IT and communications. However, there remains a lack of understanding around the geological nature of these materials and their respective resource risks. "The increasing complexity of technologies we are using means we are using more of the periodic table," he points out. "The trouble is, things can change really quickly and the big issue is data, it's very hard to get the data we need, particularly around secondary recycling materials." Bloodworth argues that with such poor metrics around raw materials extraction and secondary material flows, there is a pressing need for intervention right across the supply chain. He highlights the issue of metals

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