Visualised value chains bring the full business system into view, making it clear where impacts sit, where responsibility lies and where meaningful change can happen.
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A visualised value chain (VC) is a structured representation of a company’s upstream, own operations and downstream activities, used to identify impacts, risks and opportunities across the full business system.
In sustainability reporting, visualised value chains help organisations meet regulatory expectations, communicate complex systems clearly and link material issues to real world activities.
Visualised value chains are fast becoming a staple of sustainability reporting, and for good reason. At Ever, our clients are asking for more and more advice on how to map, interrogate and visualise value chains, to communicate their impact to the wider world. As we are fully integrated with our designers, we love talking through complex and tricky value chain maps to make sure the value creation process is clear to those at its head, and those looking in from outside the business.
What is a value chain in sustainability reporting?
It sounds simple at first glance, but once you get closer, value chains get more and more interesting and complex!
A value chain (VC) describes the series of activities that a business performs to create its intellectual property (IP), for example, a product or service. It encompasses the entire lifecycle of creating or delivering the business’ IP, including:
- Upstream activities: Everything that happens before a product or service reaches the company itself, e.g. raw materials extraction, agriculture, processing and supplier manufacturing.
- Own operations: Core activities that the business directly controls, e.g. social factors including employees in offices and factories, as well as other factors for business operations such as logistics and energy use.
- Downstream activities: Everything that happens after the business’ IP leaves its hands, e.g. IP distribution, consumer use and end-of-life treatment such as disposal, recycling or reuse.
For businesses, value chain reporting matters because it helps to reveal where their most significant ESG-related issues, risks and opportunities (IROs) actually sit, and nine times out of ten, this is often beyond their own operations. By mapping activities across upstream, downstream and own operations, VCs provide a clear starting point for spotting systemic leverage points, where targeted action and innovation can make the business more sustainable and resilient overall.
Businesses often have very complex VCs. Think about the office you may be sitting in right now. The electricity powering your laptop, the water in the kitchen tap, and let’s not forget that those essential coffee pods were all extracted, processed and manufactured somewhere upstream before being delivered to your office and used day to day. And downstream? That’s everything from coffee pod waste and packaging, to energy use, water discharge and end-of-life equipment. Even the most straightforward office has a surprisingly complex value chain behind it. Visualised value chains within sustainability reports tell the value generation story from a material issues point of view – setting out value chain actors alongside IROs and material issues. We love to see visualised VCs as, when done well, they help to bring a report to life and make it tangible – by breaking up dense text, and making information more accessible and digestible.
Our personal favourites
There are lots of different ways to visualise a value chain, with organisations opting for approaches that are more design led, data heavy or strategy focused. Novo Nordisk, Mondi, IKEA, Arla Foods and Ørsted’s approaches to value chain visualisation stood out the most, and we’ll go through them in detail below. We found that Ørsted and Mondi use highly structured, system-led visuals which allow them to bring clarity to complex, asset-heavy value chains, whereas Novo Nordisk and Arla Foods combine simplified graphics with detailed tables to strike an effective balance with visualisation while being informative. IKEA does a really good job of embedding key material topics, such as circularity, into its value chain both strategically and visually.
Ørsted is a Denmark-based renewable energy company developing, building and operating offshore and onshore wind, solar and energy storage projects.
Read if you like CSRD, IROs deep-dive, and very green visuals.
As a CSRD early adopter, Ørsted excels at visualising its value chain in a way that is intuitive and informative, clearly mapping upstream, own operations and downstream activities to value chain actors while explicitly linking material IROs to each stage. Its easy-to-follow, visually appealing roadmap makes its complex business far more accessible to stakeholders. By mapping material IROs directly from their DMA onto the value chain, this helps to make them more tangible and sets a clear foundation for showing how sustainability is being embedded and continuously evolved across the full value chain.
View Orsted Annual Report value chain, page 68
Novo Nordisk is a Denmark-based pharmaceutical company specialising in diabetes care, obesity treatments and rare disease medicines.
Read if you appreciate a clear visual overview that’s properly underpinned by detailed materiality work.
What works particularly well in Novo Nordisk’s value chain reporting is its hybrid approach: a simplified visual overview paired with a detailed table that maps material IROs under each material topic, showing their position in the value chain and associated time horizons. This layered format is highly informative, giving stakeholders a quick sense of where impacts sit and the depth needed to understand their significance, within the value chain. This structure supports Novo Nordisk’s regulatory and strategic aims by clearly signposting where each material topic is discussed (including page references), helping stakeholders navigate the report while reinforcing how sustainability considerations are embedded across the full value chain.
View Novo Nordisk Annual Report double materiality assessment, page 53
A favourite client of ours, Mondi is a UK and Austria-based packaging and paper company producing sustainable packaging solutions and paper products.
Read if you like big industrial systems, real numbers and value chains that mean business.
Mondi’s robust integrated value chain visual clearly quantifies material and product flows and, crucially, links these to carbon emissions (Mt), showing a level of data maturity that allows Mondi to pinpoint where impact sits across the chain. Mondi is able to translate its complex value chain into a streamlined waterfall graphic making it easy for stakeholders to follow. Its robust data reporting approach strengthens Mondi’s reporting credibility in areas such as climate reporting and circularity.
Read Mondi Group Integrated report and financial statements 2024, page 10
IKEA is a Sweden-based home furnishings company designing and selling affordable furniture, home accessories and solutions.
Read if you like circularity front and centre, clever design and a value chain that actually loops.
IKEA stands out for taking a key material theme, such as circularity, and making it a core structural element of its value visualisation. Through intuitive design, clear iconography and overlapping loops that demonstrate its value chain and acknowledgement of indirect product usage outside of its value chain, IKEA is able to create a sense of “movement” that makes its complex system easy to follow. Hard-wiring circularity into the structure of the value chain itself helps to make IKEA’s strategic ambitions an operational reality, making it clear where materials, products and responsibilities flow and loop back through the system. This helps to reinforce IKEA’s proactive approach to reaching its climate, nature and circularity ambitions business wide.
Read IKEA Sustainability Report FY24, page 20
Arla Foods is a Denmark-based dairy co-operative producing milk, cheese, butter and other dairy products, with strong in-house expertise across farming, processing and food science.
Read if you like your value chains farm to fork, scored and mapped.
Arla Foods utilises a hybrid approach to value chain visualisation with a clear, end-to-end visual banner that anchors the reader, paired with detailed tables that map specific material topics and IROs onto each stage of the chain, alongside measurable indicators showing impact versus financial materiality. This combination makes complex sustainability issues far more tangible, allowing stakeholders to have a greater understanding of Arla Foods’ targeted sustainability innovations and implementation.
Read Arla Foods Annual Report 2024, page 35
Bringing the whole system into view
Key takeaways
- Visualised value chains help organisations identify where ESG impacts, risks and opportunities sit across upstream, own operations and downstream activities.
- The most effective value chain visuals reflect the realities of the business, whether data heavy, design led or strategy focused.
- Leading reporters use value chains to link material issues, IROs and regulatory disclosures in a clear, accessible way.
Visualised value chains are far more than design features in a sustainability report; they are powerful tools for showing where impacts sit, where responsibility lies and where meaningful change can happen.
Is there a blueprint for value chains?
What these examples show is that there is no single blueprint for doing this well, and the most effective value chains reflect the realities of the business, whether data heavy, design led or strategically structured. By mapping upstream, own operations and downstream activities in a clear and engaging way, businesses not only move sustainability from abstract commitments to practical decision-making, but also strengthen transparency across their value chains, creating the visibility needed to identify IROs, improve practices and ultimately make their supply chains more sustainable.
Let's talk
If this has sparked ideas about how your organisation could better visualise and strengthen its value chain, we would be delighted to continue the conversation, please do get in touch.