Procurement with Purpose Newsletter No 130, September 9th 2025, with camping, Scope 3 struggles, CIPS SM Awards and Heat

A contrasting 24 hours for me last week. I was at the CIPS Awards dinner on Thursday evening, a most enjoyable evening, black tie and booze - see more below. Then on Friday morning I drove up to Lincolnshire to spend a day and night at the Nene Valley Rock Festival where an old friend’s band were playing (see photo above).  And for the first time in decades I camped, on my own in a little tent in the beautiful grounds of Grimsthorpe Castle. I was right at one end of the camping area so nothing between me and the lake 100 yards away, busy with ducks, geese and herons. The only noise at night was an owl (the average age of attendees meant there was no all-night carousing) and I slept well, communing with nature, I told myself. I felt so relaxed on Saturday morning, watching the mist over the lake clear in the sun, and I really want to do it again soon…

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Slow progress on Scope 3?

Back to reality and consulting firm Proxima – now owned by US giant Bain & Company – published the third annual summary of The Scope 3 Maturity Benchmark, a report titled ‘Ambition to Action on Scope 3’ (download it here).  “Created in conjunction with the Scope 3 Peer Group, the Benchmark is a tool for large enterprises to measure and manage their maturity in terms of how best procurement can tackle Scope 3 emissions”.

Over 300 organisation have completed their Benchmark, so there is a lot of data to unpick here. The report also draws on other research and publications, which is useful and interesting. For instance, a 2025 Ecovadis US survey shows that few large US firms have really cut back on sustainability investments – but around a third are ‘investing more but promoting less’.

Back to the Scope 3 Benchmark, and the headline is that when it comes to addressing Scope 3 emissions, the gap between business ambition and real procurement strategy – let alone tangible delivery – is stark. However, the good news is that ‘repeat benchmarkers’ (we can assume they are the more established / enthusiastic organisations in terms of Scope 3) show a 20% improvement on the previous benchmark.

However, in general, ‘core procurement strategy and operating elements lag’, and no less than 80% of benchmarking organisations ‘do not have a defined procurement strategy’ to address supplier-related emissions. In terms of the 30 or so benchmarking elements, ‘Talent acquisition and retention’ is the lowest scoring by some way.  I suspect that simply means that there aren’t many people out there who know how to develop a credible strategy and then deliver on the desired outcomes. But maybe some of that is simply a lack of clarity on what exactly organisations should be doing?

The report also makes the valid point that CPOs are not getting lots of additional resource to focus purely on sustainability. Rather, it will have to be embedded into existing roles and strategies, particularly at category management level. That seems absolutely appropriate and correct.

After the initial commentary on the data form the benchmarking, much of the report is actually an outline of how to build and implement a procurement strategy for decarbonization. There’s a lot of good and thoughtful material there, and I like the focus on segmenting suppliers, although the cynical might see it also as a sales pitch for Proxima as well. But all in all, this is a must-read report for procurement leaders, even if fundamentally there is still a long way to go, summed up by this somewhat dispiriting (but accurate) comment. “The evidence from over 300 companies shows that procurement has yet to define, at a practical level, how it will embed sustainability into procurement strategy and ways of working”.  

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CIPS SM Awards – Carbon Reduction in Supply Chains

It was my old friend Dr David Feavearyear, ex CPO at Pearson and now managing director, procurement services at Liberty Blume who invited me to the Awards dinner - my first attendance for 3 or 4 years. Liberty Blume was the lead sponsor of the Awards; if you don’t know the firm, it is a services outsourcing business, spun out of telecoms giant Liberty Global (e.g. Virgin Media O2, Telenet).  Anyway, my thanks to him for the invite and for sitting me next to his charming colleagues who had actually read my Procurement with Purpose book.

So let’s take a look at some winners in the sustainability-related categories. The winner of the best carbon reduction initiative was UK Power Networks, the firm that maintains the electricity networks across London, the South East and East of England. This is from the Awards website:

“By leveraging an industry-leading carbon reporting platform and a pioneering embodied carbon tool, UKPN is leading the way in sustainability. The reporting platform pinpoints carbon hotspots across its supply chain, resulting in a much more accurate carbon submission from c160 suppliers. In 2024, this approach resulted in a c20% reduction. Furthermore, UKPN’s embodied carbon tool resulted in a c19% reduction across completed major projects. This company doesn’t just measure, it takes real actions to reduce supply chain emissions”.

Well done to everyone involved – but it would be interesting to know more here. If it was the ‘more accurate’ carbon measurement that led to the 20% reduction, then that wasn’t a real reduction, was it? It was just better data. I guess the ‘real actions’ are what matters, so I’ll try and find out more about that.

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CIPS SM Award – Diverse Supply Base

Congratulations to Heathrow, winners in the ‘Build a Diverse Supply Base’ Category at the Awards. From the website again (with a link added):

Without clear visibility and engagement opportunities, many SMEs struggle to navigate complex procurement processes or showcase their capabilities. Bridging this gap is essential to unlocking their potential. Heathrow Lift Off addresses this by creating a more accessible pathway for SMEs to engage with our supply chain, driving innovation, promoting supplier diversity and ensuring sustainable growth for our ecosystem.

Lift Off uses a variant of the public sector CompeteFor platform. However, it is not an open registration system for smaller firms – you have to register your company on CompeteFor and ‘apply when the opportunity is published’.  I don’t think that means an actual contract opportunity; I think it is the opportunity to join the Lift Off scheme and participate in events. For instance, in June the Lift Off event focused on sustainability; circular economy and ‘nature positive’ issues in particular.

“We invited innovative SMEs to showcase forward-thinking solutions that could help us reduce environmental impact, enhance resource efficiency, and create greener, more resilient spaces across the Heathrow campus”. 

Sounds good; but we don’t know how many SMEs have actually ended up with contracts rather than just attending a nice session with Heathrow buyers.  I assume the full Awards entry included that sort of information – and that is was an impressive number - as it convinced the judges to crown it as a winner. And we’ll have more CIPS Winners with a sustainability theme next week too.  

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Long Hot Summer

It won’t come as a surprise to readers in the UK, but the summer of 2025 has been the hottest on record. The BBC reported that “provisional temperatures show the average temperature across June, July and August was 16.10C. This beats the previous seasonal high of 15.76C set in 2018”.  Those numbers average out day and night time temperatures, and that follows the warmest and sunniest spring since records began.

Those of us who are well-aged and have long memories will always remember the long hot summer of 1976. But the mean temperature of 15.70°C that summer means ‘76 has now dropped out of the top five warmest summers since records began in 1884. The top five are all post 2000.

Rainfall was below average, with provisionally just 84% of the long-term seasonal average. It was also dry, but the rainfall was very different by region. Central, southern and eastern parts of England and Wales were especially dry, whilst north-western parts of the UK, especially Scotland, have been much wetter.  Lots more detail from the Met Office website here for weather geeks like me. 

It was also the hottest summer on record in Japan and South Korea. But more immediately dangerous extreme weather has been seen in Pakistan. Terrible flooding forced half a million people to evacuate their homes in just 24 hours in Pakistan’s Punjab recently, Associated Press reported. It brings the number of people displaced since last month to 1.8 million, the newswire said.

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CMAT is a star

I tipped Irish singer-songwriter CMAT for stardom some 18 months ago, and she was brilliant at Truck Festival in July, such a charismatic performer.  And her new album, EURO-COUNTRY looks like it is elevating her to the next level, with rave reviews all round (an 88 rating on Metacritic). Her lyrics are often clever, witty, intelligent, but she can write great musical hooks too.  This is the title track, but note, the first verse is sung in Irish. That confused me on first listen!