Avery Dennison Releases Report on “The Missing Billions, The Real Cost of Supply Chain Waste”

05 December 2022: On average 8% of stock perishes or is discarded annually. Adding up to $163 billion worth of inventory wasted each year, more than the GDP of Croatia, Costa Rica, and Iceland combined. That is why Global forces are driving supply chain disruption leading businesses to overproduce and improperly forecast consumer demand.

Is your brand ready to take steps to reduce its supply chain waste? Here is an in-depth report – “The Missing Billions, The real cost of supply chain waste” – assessing the state of global supply chains worldwide. Avery Dennison, a global leader in materials science and digital identification solutions, recently conducted this research. It is Avery Dennison’s goal to enable businesses in their ambition for more efficient, sustainable, and zero-waste supply chain solutions. Supporting this ambition, in collaboration with its research partners Canvas8 and VDC, they conducted global business and consumer studies to better understand the problem of waste in the supply chain and the solutions in practice.

The Missing Billions: The real cost of supply chain waste is an in-depth report of 300+ businesses and 7500+ consumers, which assesses the state of global supply chains and the issue of waste across the US, the UK, France, China and Japan. The report focuses on five core segments – food; beauty; apparel; automotive; healthcare and pharmaceuticals.
The aim of this study is to improve transparency, trust, and item-level visibility through data-led solutions; highlight the value of sustainable supply chains; and understand how consumer priorities have an impact on waste.

The study observed that Global organizations are overproducing and exacerbating the supply chain crisis. The data found that while companies are acutely aware of the problem, they are not yet investing the budget required to fix it.

Around two out of five shoppers surveyed (43%) report that transparency about a product’s journey is important to them when buying clothing. Whether it’s for food, fashion, or beauty, half of the consumers expect sustainable manufacturing and distribution.

The research found that 4.3% of inventory is going to waste globally due to the accidental damage or destruction of goods, across apparel, beauty, food, pharmaceuticals, and automotive. Consumers rank increased transparency about materials and ingredients as the top way brands can help them make more sustainable purchases around apparel, beauty and food.

Francisco Melo, SVP and General Manager at Avery Dennison Smartrac, says “You cannot avoid problems you can’t foresee – visibility of your inventory is crucial, and to do this successfully, businesses need to invest in digital Identification solutions to give them accurate near real-time data across their supply chain.”

He highlights the Auburn University’s report, by saying “Without RFID, apparel retailers currently have 65% inventory accuracy but with RFID, the rate improves up to 99%. Consultancy McKinsey has identified ‘more than a 25% improvement in inventory accuracy by using RFID in retail with 1.0–3.5% increases in full-price sell-through tied to better management and lower stockouts. These findings demonstrate the importance of taking action now and those that do will see their supply chains become a competitive advantage. Making these incremental improvements can help us collectively strive for a zero waste future, which is crucial for the bottom line as well as the future of our planet.”

Avery Dennison solutions equip companies across a diverse range of industries (from food and apparel to beauty, aviation, automotive, and healthcare) to optimize their supply chains and create richer consumer experiences. Its suite of technologies, including RFID, enables individual physical items to be assigned with a unique digital identity, helping businesses and brands to track inventory and trace products and their constituent parts back to every point of origin.

According to the company, Digital identification technologies are proven to improve transparency thus helping to reduce waste, increase brand protection and provide consumers with product authentication and open up a myriad of customer experiences from brand storytelling to direct-to-consumer (D2C) sales to recycling and circularity.

The full report can be downloaded at .. https://www.supply-chain-waste.com/