Kering sets new nature and materials targets for post-2025 strategy

Kering is shifting its sustainability story from aspiration to operating rules. The group’s new post-2025 agenda puts nature, materials, innovation and water management at the center, a telling move for a luxury company that now has to prove how cashmere, leather, cotton and supply-chain chemistry can be sourced with less strain on land and freshwater.

The timing is deliberate. Kering published its 2016-2025 Impact Report on the eve of World Environment Day, marking a decade since it first set out its “Crafting Tomorrow’s Luxury” strategy in 2016. That earlier plan was built around three pillars, Care, Collaborate and Create, and Kering says it has steadily evolved as new expectations and pressures emerged. The next phase is meant to go further by decoupling growth from resource use through innovation and new business models.

What is more measurable now is water. In April 2025, Kering announced a dedicated Water-Positive Strategy with a target of Net Water-Positive Impact by 2050 and measured net positive impacts in key hotspots by 2035. It also named 10 priority water basins and set a first Water Resilience Lab in the Arno Basin in Tuscany for autumn 2025. That kind of basin-level action is where luxury is heading next, because water risk no longer sits in the abstract. It sits in dye houses, tanning operations, raw-material farms and the regions that feed them.

The materials side is more advanced than a typical corporate pledge, but it is still full of operational questions. Kering says it aimed for full traceability in key raw materials by 2025, and its latest figures show 97% traceability and 86% alignment with Kering Standards. Those standards cover traceability, social compliance, environmental protection, animal welfare and chemical use. Yet the new post-2025 language, focused on nature and materials, is broader than the numbers. That signals the pressure point for luxury: how to keep raising the bar on sourcing while still scaling creativity and controlling costs.

Kering’s own footprint shows why the next phase matters. The company said its 2025 greenhouse gas footprint reached 1,860,845 tCO2e, with 1,819,043 tCO2e in Scope 3 and only about 2% coming from Scope 1 and 2. It has already banned fur, launched the Regenerative Fund for Nature with Conservation International in 2021, and said more than 225 startups have joined its innovation orbit. For Kering, the hard work ahead is not about announcing a greener ideal. It is about rewiring sourcing, water stewardship and material innovation so the supply chain can carry the luxury business that depends on it.