Learn how the supply-chain logistics company Brambles utilises Futures Platform to support trend research and scenario building work.
Foresight to increase visibility of future scenarios
Brambles is a supply-chain logistics company whose circular business model facilitates the share and reuse of pallets, crates, and containers in more than 60 countries. The company forms the invisible backbone of global supply chains, helping FMCG, beverage, retail, and general manufacturing industries in transporting their goods around the world while minimising environmental impact. Brambles uses Futures Platform to stay on top of industry knowledge in the supply chain sector, and to discuss the impact emerging trends might have on their business through future scenarios.
Since global supply chains are characterised by a high level of volatility and fragmentation, having visibility of future scenarios is of high importance to the organisation. Kelly Skinner, Senior Director, Global Category Innovation at Brambles, says: “Under the CHEP brand, Brambles has been globally pooling pallets for the food and beverage industry for over seventy years – enabling consumers to buy their weekly grocery goods without having to think about how their items arrived on the shelves of their local stores. In the wake of the rapid changes experienced between 2020 and 2023, the supply chain’s historically important but low-profile role has now come to the forefront as a critical strategic element for companies. Covid-19 has challenged many well-documented supply and demand issues, and more recently, large geopolitical events have tested the resilience of several supply chains under pressure. Big questions have arisen around the key strategies in place to ensure that a smooth and free-flowing supply chain can pursue once again and in the face of uncertain future events.”
Skinner elaborates, “As a key player within the FMCG supply chain, it is vital that Brambles continues to look ahead and assess the big opportunities and risks that might arise. To do this and help us deliver our future foresight strategy, we need insights that help identify impactful situations ahead of time to increase our preparedness.”
Brambles selected Futures Platform as a strategic foresight tool to assist with creating visibility of the future. Skinner explains: “Having explored the market for trend and foresight research tools, Futures Platform impressed us with its breadth of trends and content across multiple industries. The platform allows our team to assess and select those trends that are relevant for Brambles – and easily display the content to internal colleagues via the platform’s Trend Radars.”
“Futures Platform impressed us with its breadth of trends and content across multiple industries.”
Kelly Skinner, Senior Director, Global Category Innovation, Brambles
A future-back foresight process
When looking at the future, Brambles starts their foresight process with a broad consumer lens, and then work backwards to identify the so-what relevance for the company.
Skinner explains: “We run a cyclical foresight process to ensure that whilst we focus on developing the identified future growth opportunities, we continue to scan the horizon and look ahead for unforeseen changes in the market - the future never stands still! At the start of our process, we consciously look ahead with a broad lens to consider the end consumers’ perspective, and then work backwards to consider the impact on the broader supply chain – and finally consider the more specific so-what factors for our company. We use this future-back method to ensure we don’t immediately jump to the future of logistics, which would be easy to do, but would potentially narrow our thinking and result in us missing future developments that start at the heart of changing consumer behaviour.”
“For example, if we analyse how consumers in 2030 will be reacting to issues around climate, health, politics, etc., you can consider future scenarios that may see a greater demand for development in regenerative farming, cultured meats, and local brands. Next, we can consider how these changing demands might impact the types of goods available and the methods through which they reach the consumer. We can then begin to consider elements such as the future of a fragmented supply chain, increased demand in track & trace digitalisation, and the evolution of channels to reach the end consumer. This approach means we can have some very powerful strategic discussions both internally and with our customers around how we can innovate for the market’s future needs,” elaborates Skinner.
Using Futures Platform to stay on top of emerging trends
One important method the innovation team at Brambles uses is scenario building, which allows them to consider how two or more trends might impact each other, depending on
how each develops. Future scenarios help them visualise what large-scale opportunities or disruptions might be ahead, and more specifically, what aspects they should track to assess the likelihood of them happening. This tracking of relevant inflection points around future scenarios enables them to ask the right strategic questions for their future core business.
Skinner explains, “Independent trends don’t impact the future alone. In fact, any change that we will see in ten years’ time is a consequence of interlinking events and different trends developing in tangent. It is impossible to predict the future, but instead we aim to build different scenarios that allow us to play around with multiple ‘what if’ factors. We use Futures Platform, among numerous sources, to identify which are the strengthening market trends and how, together, they may result in more powerful longer-term scenarios that we have to pay attention to.”
James McNaught, Global Innovation Intern, provides an example on how various trends are considered in parallel: “If we look at the Slow Life, 15-Minute City and Urbanisation trends, we fundamentally ask: Will these trends require us to consider future changes in how we move our pallets within the supply chain? Together, will they lead to more consumers migrating to big cities, whilst still looking for ‘slow living’ solutions like greener and pedestrian with fewer cars and less fumes, and more local amenities within walking distance? What does this mean for consumer goods – will there be less acceptance of traffic and delivery vans in city centres? Will there be less acceptance of home delivery, and a need for more efficient click-and-collect system in controlled zones? These are the types of questions we ask to help us think about the future of goods movement.”
“We use Futures Platform, among numerous sources, to identify the strengthening market trends and how, together, they may result in more powerful longerterm scenarios that we have to pay attention to.”
Kelly Skinner, Senior Director, Global Category Innovation, Brambles
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Sharing future-focused insights with internal teams
One objective of Brambles’ Innovation team is to increase collaboration with other
teams on future-focused topics. The team shares insights and information with other departments to inform them about trends and signals and to initiate discussions.
Building their own Brambles Megatrends Radar on Futures Platform was an important step for the Innovation team to create more awareness on their foresight work. McNaught reflects: “When we shared our Megatrend radar with colleagues, there was a lot of engagement with the radar. We noticed that it encouraged forward-looking conversations between different teams and prompted questions about opportunities to adopt the application across other teams.”
Skinner adds: “The ability to share this future trend conversation with colleagues across the regions helps us to push the future-mindset conversation forward. We are a large global company and it’s important that we continually develop our foresight capabilities from an enterprise-wide level; evolving our future strategy to be beneficial for both Brambles and its customers from a global perspective. The future consumer goods supply chains across APAC, North America, Europe and LATAM may look very different to one another, as consumers face different demands and needs across the globe. We cannot cover that level of global insight alone as a central team; therefore it is important we engage with our colleagues across all our regions and listen to the market insights that they are capturing.”
“The ability to share this future trend conversation with colleagues across the regions helps us to push the future-mindset conversation forward.”
Kelly Skinner, Senior Director, Global Category Innovation, Brambles
The Innovation team’s ambition is to conduct more collaborative foresight work across different departments. They are challenging other teams to explore the foresight radars on Futures Platform, build radars themselves, and share them with others. McNaught explains: “We will continue to explore how different teams can benefit from developing a variety of trend radars on Futures Platform and continue using it as a central reference point for visibility on what different teams consider to be relevant market changes.”
McNaught concludes with a final note; “Trend foresight is an ongoing work; some market changes happen at speed and persist, and some come and go – the important aspect is to know which changes you want to track, and what changing indicators suggest when and where we should react as a business. That’s the key, and that’s where the value of having the right partners and tools in place comes through.”
About the Innovation team at Brambles
Kelly Skinner leads Group Innovation at Brambles and engages with industry partners across topics, such as future warehouse automation and future of retail, to continually understand how changing consumer behaviour and technological advances may impact the way goods are produced and moved across the supply chain.
James McNaught is in his final year studying Product Design at Central Saint Martins, whilst supporting Brambles on their foresight research.
If you’d like to reach out and discuss any FMCG Supply Chain elements with the Innovation team further – please contact them via innovation@brambles.com