Tetra Pak: Creating a Recycling Chain in China

Description

In early 2016, the newly appointed recycling planning coordinator for an industry-leading food packaging and processing company, Tetra Pak International SA (Tetra Pak), was reviewing his company's recent success in creating a recycling chain in China. By 2015, Tetra Pak China had successfully created a recycling chain system, increasing China’s recycling rate from almost zero in 2004 to 28 per cent. It had done so by following a four-stage process: scanning the recycling market, building awareness and selecting partners, creating recycling capacity, and securing the recycling capacity. While the recycling planning coordinator was pleased with this recent success, he knew that questions remained: How could Tetra Pak continuously motivate recyclers to grow? How could Tetra Pak support recycling activities to achieve an even higher recycling rate? How could Tetra Pak achieve its recycling targets without much financial support?

Learning Objective

This case allows undergraduate and MBA students to explore sustainable supply chain management in a real business situation. The case also has practical implications for general managers, supply chain managers, and corporate social responsibility managers. After working through the case and assignment questions, students will be able to understand and apply ·the concept of supply chain leadership to analyze a business case; ·elements of supply chain learning such as learning content and learning process; ·lower-tier supplier governance mechanisms—that is, direct and indirect governance and working with a third party; ·various multi-tier supply chain frameworks, including closed, open, and transitional frameworks; and ·the concepts of supply chain leadership, supply chain learning, supply chain structure, and supplier governance to explain how Tetra Pak created a recycling supply chain in China.

Keywords

multi-tier supply chain supply chain leadership supply chain learning sustainable supply chain management