• Bain & Company and Systemiq will collaborate to help businesses seize opportunities to accelerate towards sustainable packaging, leveraging both material solutions and new business models.
• Both companies will help industry turn positive intentions on sustainability into lasting action and impact by advising companies on long-term strategies to manage materials use and curb waste, while enhancing customer experience and profitability.
• New and unique client offerings will leverage both firms’ strengths and capabilities in critical areas including regulation, technology, consumer behaviour, infrastructure and financial investments.
• The companies are exploring bringing in additional collaborators with unique policy, data, and innovation expertise in recognition that broad collaboration is essential.

Bain & Company and Systemiq are starting a new collaboration through which they will work together in advising clients worldwide on sustainable packaging solutions and strategies to transition to a circular plastics economy. Together, Bain and Systemiq will help clients deliver new innovations for the sector and tackle critical global sustainability challenges – including material use, greenhouse gas emissions, waste, and impacts on nature.

Packaging is one of the fastest-moving sustainability arenas for global consumer businesses, and one of top three areas of focus for consumers themselves in countries across the world.  In joining forces to re-design products, accelerate new circular business models and production processes, Bain & Company and Systemiq will help clients extend product life cycles and improve resource productivity – making more using less.

The collaboration will harness Systemiq’s deep knowledge in systems change, technical expertise in packaging, and world-class credentials with clients, along with Bain & Company’s global reach, deep experience across the industry’s entire value-chain, and industry-leading consumer and economic insights. By going to market together, the firms expect to have a major impact on this important space for companies in the consumer products, retail, packaging, material production and waste management sectors, as well as consumers, broader stakeholders, and the planet. Systemiq and Bain will jointly offer clients new and unique engagement models that were not available before this partnership.

With packaging emissions exceeding those from the aviation sector, and significant leakage of waste continuing to occur to the natural environment, Bain and Systemiq are particularly excited to be collaborating to support practical plastics and packaging solutions which will bring together economics, innovation, and sustainability.       

“Together with Systemiq, Bain will help clients navigate the array of consumer,  technology, regulatory and economic hurdles,” said Jenny Davis-Peccoud, leader of Bain’s Sustainability &  Responsibility practice. “Empowering clients to select the right opportunities, rooted by insights and data, will set the stage for an uptick in material innovation and a downtick in packaging usage, waste, and pollution.”

“Collaboration is a critical ingredient of system change and an essential part of Systemiq’s DNA. We are always looking for like-minded partners with whom we can find new solutions to the urgent issues our planet is facing. We are thrilled to work with Bain on sustainable packaging to bring the best of both worlds to our clients in delivering their system change ambitions”, said Yoni Shiran, Systemiq Partner and Plastics & Packaging Lead.

“The pace of change within plastic and packaging is astounding,” said Jean Charles van den Branden, leader of Bain’s ESG Practice in Europe, Middle East and Africa. “Brands are contending with ever-shifting regulation, disruptive innovation and increasing customer and wider stakeholder scrutiny.”

Both companies will work together to address the roadblocks and challenges to progress on sustainability listed above through collaboration on cutting-edge projects that will transform the plastic and packaging industry.

About Bain & Company

Bain & Company is a global consultancy that helps the world’s most ambitious change makers define the future.

Across 64 cities in 39 countries, we work alongside our clients as one team with a shared ambition to achieve extraordinary results, outperform the competition, and redefine industries. We complement our tailored, integrated expertise with a vibrant ecosystem of digital innovators to deliver better, faster, and more enduring outcomes. Our 10-year commitment to invest more than $1 billion in pro bono services brings our talent, expertise, and insight to organizations tackling today’s urgent challenges in education, racial equity, social justice, economic development, and the environment. We earned a platinum rating from EcoVadis, the leading platform for environmental, social, and ethical performance ratings for global supply chains, putting us in the top 1% of all companies. Since our founding in 1973, we have measured our success by the success of our clients, and we proudly maintain the highest level of client advocacy in the industry.

About Systemiq

Systemiq, the system-change company, was founded in 2016 to drive the achievement of the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals, by transforming markets and business models in four key economic systems: regenerative land use, materials and circularity, energy and sustainable finance. A certified B Corp, SYSTEMIQ combines strategic advisory with high-impact, on-the-ground work, and partners with business, finance, policy-makers and civil society to deliver change. Systemiq’s people are based in Brazil, France, Germany, Indonesia, the Netherlands and the UK. Find out more at www.systemiq.earth