With a “tsunami of legislation” destined to change the operational landscape for all businesses now only months from coming into force, around half the global brand licensing industry believes it is still missing a ‘top-down strategy’ for sustainable development within their business, according to the new Sustainability in Licensing Conference survey.
New regulations around Corporate Sustainability Reporting will be landing in the business sector in 2024 leading a swathe of legislative changes that includes Extended Producer Responsibility taxes – tipped to take over from current Plastic Packaging Tax – by the end of next year and into 2025.
The slate of legislative demands will shape a new course for businesses and how they engage with their supply chains and collect data across all areas of the business in alignment with the UK’s wider net zero strategy.
Despite the rapidity with which these changes are heading towards UK businesses, however, a significant portion (46%) of respondents to the Sustainability in Licensing Conference survey believe they still lack a ‘top-down’ sustainability strategy within their business.
The good news is that a majority of those respondents (82.61%) do feel their business has the senior management buy-in to start building those strategies into operations. Highlighted among some of the issues currently being faced, however, a ‘lack of ownership to drive progress’, alongside the lack of resource and headcount stand very clear.
This is reflected in both a breakdown of the sessions during the one-day London conference ranked by attendees as the most informative and in response to the question of what business already have a team dedicated to sustainability in place. A majority of 83.33% of respondents found the session Mapping your Impact: The Sustainability Framework Maturity Index the most useful for industry, followed closely the panel session Legislation Nation: How European law-making is changing business around us to be the most informative on the day – highlighting just where the largest gaps in industry knowledge currently lay.
Meanwhile, 53.85% of businesses now have a team dedicated to sustainability, leaving just under half those respondents currently lacking the internal resources.
What’s clear is that while many organisations do have a strategy or team in place to oversee wider brand and company efforts, those resources are still lacking when it comes to the consumer product departments. In this area alone, in fact, 56% of respondents feel not enough work is being undertaken within their businesses to drive sustainable practices. A resounding 76% of survey respondents also believe their business could be doing more to drive change with calls for internal subject matter experts and people to help train clients and deliver engagement projects among the loudest from the industry.
That all gives a very strong message to brand owners and company directors within the global brand licensing sector that employees have already bought-in to the sustainability conversation, but more work and resources are now needed to turn industry ambitions into industry action.
The Sustainability in Licensing Conference
The report, of course, gives Products of Change and the Sustainability in Licensing Conference team the chance to pinpoint areas that will need greater focus in the coming year. 100% of visitors, both online and in-person found the content of the event relevant and informative and 100% also left the event having gained knowledge they were otherwise missing. Of those, legislation stands head and shoulders above all else, highlighting a clear need for industry education around the legislative demands that are heading our way in the coming months and years.
As an event, SiLC 2023 provided a number of key points that business owners and employees will be taking back to start implementing in their own operations. With so much of the incoming legislation dependent on the gathering of data – product and supply chain – it stands to reason that the need to start collecting that information across all levels of the business stood out as the biggest takeaway message.
The results from this year’s Sustainability in Licensing Conference survey will now go towards not only shaping the look of SiLC 24 but the output from the Products of Change team and its membership engagement strategy over the coming year to ensure key talking and pain points for businesses continue to be hit upon.
