BITMORE
Cabin Pressure
Travel Retail Intelligence
Edition 10
Governance
16 September 2026
Governance
16 September 2026
The number that matters this week
28%
of Fortune Global 500 companies now have targets across three or more nature dimensions, up from 16% in 2022.
Source: McKinsey & Company, Corporate nature commitments have expanded, but progress is uneven
Governance · Nature & Biodiversity Targets
Nature and biodiversity are becoming a genuine boardroom topic. It lands very unevenly across travel retail.
This one's a bit further from our own category than most editions, but worth knowing about regardless, it's a genuine macro trend, and it's a useful reminder that sustainability in this channel is broader than carbon and packaging alone.
The trend, plainly
McKinsey's most recent analysis of Fortune Global 500 sustainability reporting tracks six dimensions of nature: carbon, water, chemicals and plastics, biodiversity, forests, and nutrients. The share of companies with targets across three or more of these dimensions rose from 16% in 2022 to 28% in 2025. Deforestation, water and plastics commitments in particular are broadening well beyond the companies that were already leading on climate specifically.
Source: McKinsey & Company, 2025 analysis
Where it lands hardest in our channel
Beauty, spirits and confectionery carry most of the exposure here, not tech and accessories, and there's now a specific regulatory reason why. The EU Deforestation Regulation covers seven commodities directly, including palm oil and cocoa, requiring companies to prove their sourcing hasn't involved deforestation since December 2020. It takes effect for large companies from 30 December 2025, and for SMEs from 30 June 2026. That's not an abstract industry trend, it's a live legal requirement landing squarely on beauty's most common ingredient and confectionery's core one. On the confectionery side specifically, Global Witness found UK cocoa imports alone drove over 2,000 hectares of deforestation in 2025, mostly in Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana. Spirits carry their own version of this through agricultural inputs and water use. Tech and accessories aren't implicated in the same direct way, our supply chains simply don't run through palm oil or cocoa.
Source: RSPO, EUDR legislation guide, December 2025 · Global Witness, via Mongabay, April 2026
Where Bitmore stands
We'd rather be precise here than sweeping. Our FSC certified packaging covers deforestation-free fibre sourcing for the packaging itself, and our GRS certified materials cover a responsibly managed materials chain. Those are the two genuine touchpoints we have with this conversation, and we're not going to claim more than that. We haven't mapped deforestation risk across our full materials chain, so we wouldn't describe ourselves as nature-positive, that's simply not a claim we've earned yet.
If nature and biodiversity reporting is starting to touch your own sourcing conversations, happy to talk through what our FSC and GRS certifications actually cover and where the boundaries sit. Reply if useful.
A bit more info, as always.
Adam
Commercial Director · Bitmore · adam@bitmore.co.uk
BITMORE
Cabin Pressure
bitmore.co.uk · adam@bitmore.co.uk
A bit more info, as always.