Commodity Supply Chains

The production of globally-traded commodities – such as cocoa, palm oil, timber and soy – is often linked to deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions, and social challenges. These pose significant risks to the resilience and sustainability of global supply chains. Growing stakeholder expectations and increasing legislation, such as the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) and the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), require greater accountability and transparency.

3Keel’s Commodity Supply Chains business unit provides expert support to help businesses understand and mitigate risks, improve traceability, and drive sustainability across supply chains for globally-traded forest-risk commodities, as well as seafood.

We also convene and facilitate influential sector collaborations that support pre-competitive action and enable wider transformation, including the Retail Soy Group and the Sustainable Seafood Coalition.

Jenni Wilson

Head of Commodity Supply Chains

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What solutions and expertise do we offer?

We combine longstanding experience working in commodity supply chains with technical expertise and advanced data capabilities to provide strategic advice and support.

We pride ourselves on working to understand the nuances of different commodities and sectors, as well as each individual client’s objectives. Our advice is grounded in our understanding of what is needed to drive meaningful change within supply chains and at sector level, and how individual organisations can realistically and effectively contribute to that shift.

Where our work identifies a need to address the sustainable production of crops and commodities, or for wider climate or nature-related strategies, we can connect clients to specialist colleagues in our Agriculture & Landscapes and Climate, Nature & Resources teams.

Supply chain mapping

Provision of high-quality, accessible supply-chain data that enables businesses to understand risks within their supply chains
Structured systems and processes to gather data efficiently, which are reliable and straightforward for suppliers to use
Reports and dashboards that enable supply-chain data to be interpreted and used to make plans, take action and verify progress

Strategy & roadmaps

Analyses of supply-chain visibility, characteristics and sourcing risks – identifying priorities or hotspots
Clear, comprehensive strategies and roadmaps to manage supply-chain risks that align with business needs and priorities
Peer and sector benchmarks, to understand sustainability performance and identify opportunities to move in tandem with the sector, or to demonstrate leadership

Research & analysis

Smart design and visualisations to derive insights from complex information
Innovative methods to gather or combine datasets – leveraging new data sources or technology to derive fresh insights
New tools and approaches that bring fresh perspective or can help bring shared understanding of sustainability and risk to wider audiences

Coalitions & collaborative approaches

Facilitation of coalitions between supply-chain actors, helping identify priorities where collective action can drive greatest impact
Collection, analysis and presentation of information to inform industry alignment and sector-wide action
Development of common positions and tools to support advocacy and engagement

Our specialisms

Understanding supply chains

Commodity supply chains are complex, often involving multiple processing stages and countries, particularly for embedded products such as soy in animal proteins. This makes it difficult to identify sustainability risks and intervention points. We help businesses map and understand the challenges, engage suppliers, and analyse data to improve sourcing decisions and reduce risk.As well as working with individual clients, each year we undertake a collective supply-chain mapping programme for around 20 retailers and manufacturers across four commodities: soy, palm oil, cocoa and coffee. This collective approach involves direct engagement with thousands of suppliers across multiple markets. It helps to reduce the burden on supply-chain actors, and enables combined analysis for benchmarking and sectoral insights.We also help clients verify progress, enabling improvement on where and how raw materials are sourced in order to boost supply-chain sustainability.

Robust strategies for compliance & impact

Meeting sustainability commitments requires clear, actionable roadmaps that set out steps to achieve the greatest impact. Our experienced team helps our clients to identify the most effective intervention points in their value chains.We provide practical guidance and create ambitious roadmaps that are responsive to external drivers such as legislation, and are informed by competitor benchmarking and the expectations of stakeholders.Owing to our longstanding experience and technical expertise, we help identify pragmatic options to influence more sustainable production – balancing long-term goals with commercial realities.

Generating actionable insights from data

Generating actionable insights from data Organisations are investing in improving traceability, and technology has made new datasets more accessible. If it can be used effectively, this increasing availability of data opens up the potential for new insights and new opportunities to take action to increase resilience.Our team is skilled in advanced analytics, helping businesses to measure impact, track sustainability performance, make informed decisions and communicate progress. We use our understanding of organisations, supply chains and data to open up new avenues for improving performance while avoiding information overwhelm.We also work with organisations that want to understand progress across entire sectors or countries – developing new methods to understand data and using it to inform advocacy and action.

Collective action for systemic change

Transforming commodity supply chains requires collaboration.We facilitate coalitions to support pre-competitive action. These coalitions enable businesses to work together on shared challenges and to drive scalable impact. They unlock approaches that are beyond the scope of any one organisation, and develop tools to build a common understanding of risks and good practices.By bringing supply-chain actors together, we create a platform to share knowledge, develop sector-wide approaches and policies, and drive progress. Coalitions help to build consensus and give producers the confidence they need to invest in the transition to sustainable practices.

Learn about our role in the Retail Soy Group

Our leadership team

Jenni Wilson leads our Commodity Supply Chains services, with support from Sian Allen, Becky Hamp and Charlotte Williams. 3Keel Director Will Schreiber also provides high-level expertise and convenes the Retail Soy Group, an independent coalition working to make sustainable soy the norm.

Jenni Wilson

Head of Commodity Supply Chains

Jenni leads a team of more than 30 consultants and analysts. She is a palm-oil traceability specialist, delivering long-term, supply-chain data collection programmes for FMCG manufacturers. She leads our work for Unilever’s NDPE palm oil reporting programme.

Will Schreiber

Director

Joining 3Keel as a Director in 2014, Will is a pragmatic thinker skilled in making sense of complex issues to deliver practical, evidence-based advice. His interests and expertise lie in supply-chain resilience, in both food and non-food sectors.

Sian Allen

Principal Consultant, Team Lead

Sian works with a range of corporate and NGO clients, giving her a well-rounded perspective on issues such as human rights, traceability and land-use change. She leads many of our data collection projects, and has a deep understanding of the operational realities and data challenges facing importers and clients.

Becky Hamp

Principal Consultant, Team Lead

Becky specialises in data collection and analysis of retail and FMCG supply chains. At 3Keel she focuses on key deforestation-risk commodities including soy, palm and timber. She works with a range of European retailers and food service clients, and previously hosted large communities of suppliers on sustainability issues.

Charlotte Williams

Senior Consultant, Team Lead

Charlotte is an expert in supporting retailers, manufacturers and FMCG companies to map supply chains, and develop action plans & roadmaps to support the elimination of deforestation from commodity systems. She is also experienced in preparing clients for the upcoming European Union Deforestation Regulation.

Explore our role in the Sustainable Seafood Coalition

Why work with us?

Clients turn to our Commodity Supply Chains business unit because we:

Are subject matter experts on global deforestation-risk commodities and seafood sourcing
Have an in-depth understanding of legislation, including EUDR, and voluntary reporting frameworks and standards
Are a strong team of data specialists and experts in complex data extraction, processing and analysis
Offer extensive experience in supplier engagement – providing clear, efficient methods to gather robust data that minimise the burden on suppliers
Have diverse global experience across corporates and NGOs
Are proud to have a track record of enabling cross-sector alignment and system-wide change

We are proud to have a team that brings a strong strategic mindset to every project. We not only provide expert neutral advice, but work with our clients to co-create robust supply-chain strategies that work on the ground.

Explore our WWF Risky Business report

A graphic showing the United Kingdom used for the report cover

Testimonials

See what others have to say

As the Nestle lead for the recycling collaboration ‘Podback’, I have worked with 3keel throughout the programme from the early scoping stage to the final stage of delivery. Throughout the different stages 3Keel have added value bringing the outside-in, providing challenge to our thinking, mediating between parties on complex and political decisions and excellent project management support. I would thoroughly recommend them as a partner if you are about to embark on this type of initiative.

Julia Gallacher

Corporate Communications & SustainabilityNespresso UK & ROI

3Keel’s expert advice, support, and friendly, customer-centric way of working have been hugely valuable, helping us to both sharpen our strategy and to have the trusted data we need to drive progress towards our goals.

Sam Lee-Gammage

Waitrose

I am always really impressed with the quality of your work and the metrics report was another good example of that. It is so nice to read reports that are well-written, substantive and visually appealing. Thank you!

Patrick Mallet

ISEAL Alliance

The WWF Risky Business report…has informed WWF’s engagement with politicians and policy makers on deforestation, as well as our conversations with Danish commodity importers and consumers. We would highly recommend working with 3Keel.

Sofie Tind Nielsen

WWF