Explore key insights from in-depth interviews with 12 global manufacturers, revealing their sustainability priorities, traceability challenges, and calls for shared accountability.
When you take the time to listen — really listen — to manufacturers working across the global consumer goods supply chain, you begin to understand the full complexity of challenges manufacturers are up against.
Over several months, Cascale, together with the International Apparel Federation (IAF), co-led the Manufacturer Interview Group, a joint project launched in November 2024 focused on elevating the voices of global consumer goods manufacturers in sustainability policy and traceability. Through a series of in-depth, one-on-one interviews with 12 global manufacturers across regions, we listened closely to their priorities, challenges, and ideas for change. These were not surveys nor short meetings. They were open, thoughtful conversations about what’s working, what’s not, and what needs to evolve.
Today, we’re sharing that perspective in the Manufacturer Interview Group Insights & Summary, which brings together the priorities and lived experiences that manufacturers so generously shared with us.
The Manufacturer Interview Group, led by Cascale and IAF, amplifies manufacturers’ voices by gathering their perspectives on regulatory challenges, ESG traceability, and policy needs.
Across every interview, one message came through clearly: manufacturers want to be part of the solution. They are committed to sustainability — but they’re under increasing pressure, often without the clarity or support they need to meet expectations.
Through the Manufacturer Interview Group, many suppliers shared that they are already familiar with major global sustainability regulations. But it’s yet another story to implement those regulations day-to-day — across different countries, legal frameworks, and production environments.
Access to renewable energy remains limited in some regions. In others, wage laws, labor requirements, and infrastructure vary dramatically. At the same time that manufacturers are pleading for shared accountability and investment, brands are calling for faster decarbonization timelines, with limited support on the ground.
The insights shared in the Summary & Insights PDF are urgent reminders of the gap between global sustainability ambitions and on-the-ground operational realities. Manufacturers are clearly prioritizing sustainability, but too often, they’re doing so without the necessary resources or meaningful involvement to shape the decisions that impact them most. What they’re asking for now is partnership and shared accountability: practical, fair, and collaborative support to help scale the solutions being built. Because at the end of the day, it’s their communities, their livelihoods, and their businesses more fully at stake in known climate-related severe weather regions.
For many manufacturers, traceability may already be part of their daily operations. On top of managing their own facility-level data and insights, they receive loads of ESG data requests from buyer companies. These data-driven processes are ultimately woven into how they manage compliance and measure impact. But in practice, traceability often feels like a one-way street: too focused on data extraction by buyers, and not enough on shared understanding on what that data means, and actionable insights to take.
In our conversations, manufacturers described the difficulty of juggling data requests across multiple SaaS (Software as a Service) traceability and supply chain management platforms. Regularly, they are responding to ad-hoc duplicative requests for similar data, and juggling inconsistent formats and timelines. Small ESG teams are spending significant time on manual updates and software retraining, just to keep up. All at the expense of time allocated to sustainability interventions in practice.
Manufacturers are calling for more effective systems: tools, like the Higg Index – Facility Environmental Module (FEM), that aim to reduce duplication, frameworks that create clarity, and long-term collaboration that enables smarter use of data across the value chain.
Based on these conversations with manufacturers, we’ve distilled a number of potential solutions that could help mitigate administrative burdens and unlock meaningful change.
1) “Data Pool” Concept
Manufacturers take a stance to create their own proprietary ESG depository systems (data pool concept), uploading data once and demanding all buyer requests to be pulled from that system. Today, many manufacturers support the development of a data pool concept which would be governed by a neutral party to help centralize ESG data and reduce duplicative buyer requests.
2) System Integrations
Incumbent traceability/ESG data management platforms come together to agree on economically feasible integrations and data-sharing models. By putting commercial sensitivities aside, stakeholders can streamline data exchange and allow manufacturers to focus on sustainability improvements in practice, rather than constantly juggling burdensome administrative requests.
3) Audit and Assessment Harmonization
The industry should work toward harmonizing audit and assessment practices to reduce duplication, lower costs, and improve the efficiency and credibility of supply chain oversight. This includes developing an audit equivalency framework that allows for mutual recognition of audits conducted under different but comparable standards, as well as aligning audit cycles to reduce the burden on facilities.
4) Standardized Supply Chain Definitions
The industry should refer to a mutually agreed-upon, uniform taxonomy of supply chain terms. This allows for consistent interpretation, reporting, and communication across manufacturers, brands, and auditors. This is especially important as regulations like the U.S. Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), the EU Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR), and the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) increasingly require companies to disclose facility and product information using clearly defined and standardized terminology.
Overall, these concepts and terms fall under the need for a Common Response Framework by Manufacturers to create alignment. Overall, manufacturers expressed a need for alignment and transparency. Their quotes are anonymized for the sanctity of the group’s open expression.
One interviewee said, “Brands and manufacturers should stay transparent about the real challenges faced on the ground in factories and prioritizing workers, taking a longer-term view that includes what the direct impacts are for facilities when brands try to roll out plans for compliance.”
Another added, “To discuss with brands what their expectations are to ensure those are actually aligned with regulatory requirements and then compare that to the current state of affairs at facilities. Longer-term partnerships with brands where costs of sustainability are shared.”
Still, another explained the reality of implementation. “Compliance is what you do to stay along with the law. Sustainability is implementing best practice. So we try to implement best practice, which hopefully a majority of it covers.”
In addition to sharing challenges, manufacturers brought forward-looking ideas for how the system could work better. Manufacturers urged policymakers to involve them early on in the legislative process, so implementation and expectations align with their complex supply chain realities. Many spoke about the need for more consistent approaches to ESG data management—ways to reduce duplication, clarify expectations, and strengthen trust across the value chain. Along that line of thinking, several interviewees affirmed their support of a centralized data pool so that verified ESG data could be securely accessed by multiple buyers, reducing the need for repetitive reporting.
There’s no one-size-fits-all answer. But what these ideas represent is a desire for greater coordination and shared responsibility. Manufacturers want to be part of designing what comes next—and they’re ready to help build it, if the industry is willing to listen.
This Manufacturer Interview Group was designed for active listening and honest reflections. What we heard was clear: 12 participating manufacturers from the U.S., the EU and the Asia-Pacific regions are already advancing sustainability across legislation, traceability, and operations. But they shouldn’t have to do it alone.
Sustainability must be a shared responsibility, in the belief of both Cascale and IAF. Costs, time, and outcomes must be equitably distributed between manufacturers and their brand partners.
That’s why this work matters. And it’s why Cascale and IAF remain committed to championing manufacturer voices—not only in reports, but in the real decisions shaping our shared future. Together, we will continue to:
This work is ongoing—and it’s only just begun. The manufacturers we spoke to were thoughtful, clear, and forward-looking. They asked for practical, collaborative, and fair solutions. We’re proud to stand with them in that effort.
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