From producer to customer: Making carbon data work at Alliance Wine

Who is Alliance Wine?

Alliance Wine is a UK-based wine company working with over 400 producers from across the world. The business focuses on distributing wines from independent producers, supplying customers across retail, hospitality, and trade.

In 2020, the business introduced its first sustainability strategy, which evolved into a Positive Impact strategy in 2024. This strategy brings together environmental and ethical considerations, while supporting the long-term resilience of the business and its supply chain.

The Challenge

Before working with Zevero, Alliance Wine had already been measuring its carbon footprint. Emissions had been calculated internally in previous years and verification processes were in place.

However, this approach had limitations. Calculations were completed annually, making it difficult to monitor progress throughout the year. Not all Scope 3 categories could be assessed in sufficient detail, and much of the data relied on spend-based estimates. This limited the business’s ability to gain clear, actionable insight into emissions across a complex supply chain.

At the same time, Alliance Wine needed to maintain ISO 14064 certification and strengthen the robustness of its reporting. To do that, the team needed a system and expert support that could improve data quality, centralise information, and support a more proactive approach to carbon management.

The Solution

To address these challenges, Alliance Wine focused first on data quality. Rather than relying solely on high-level, spend-based estimates, Alliance Wine worked with Zevero to improve the structure and consistency of its data, laying the groundwork for a gradual move towards more activity-based calculations across key Scope 3 categories.

This included cleaning and validating existing datasets, and identifying where more granular information would be needed over time, particularly across areas such as business travel and transportation.

Building on this improved data foundation, Alliance Wine worked with Zevero to calculate its Scope 1, 2, and 3 carbon footprint for the FY2023/24 reporting year. The footprint was aligned with the GHG Protocol and independently verified to ISO 14064-1 standards, providing a robust and consistent view of emissions across the business and its value chain.

This work was supported by Zevero’s experience working with alcoholic beverage businesses, and an understanding of the specific challenges associated with Scope 3 emissions across wine production, packaging, and distribution.

It is not just a platform that calculates your carbon footprint. They give you consulting support to understand it better, which enables you to establish adequate reduction initiatives.

The Results so far

While Alliance Wine is still early in its carbon reduction journey, working with Zevero has delivered several important foundations.

Clearer visibility across Scope 1–3 emissions

Alliance Wine now has clearer, more consistent insight into emissions across Scope 1, 2, and 3, supporting a stronger understanding of where emissions sit across the organisation and its supply chain.

Improved understanding of Scope 3 hotspots

Analysis of the FY2023/24 footprint showed that the majority of emissions sit within Scope 3, with purchased goods and services accounting for most of Alliance Wine’s total carbon footprint. This has helped the business focus attention on the areas with the greatest potential impact.

A consistent benchmark for tracking change‍

Alliance Wine has established an emissions intensity benchmark using emissions per 9L case sold, providing a practical metric that can be tracked and compared as reporting continues to mature.

Stronger internal alignment and decision-making

Improved data quality and clearer insight have supported stronger internal alignment, helping to inform planning and decision-making. This has also contributed to the development of Alliance Wine’s environmental management system and the establishment of environmental standards for supplier selection.

The cleaning process of the given data has been the most useful part for us. This is quite time consuming for us and we don’t have enough experience to do it. We send them the data in the best form that we are able gather it, and their internal team will go through this detailed process for us while helping to improve our data collection systems.

Looking Ahead

With stronger data foundations in place, Alliance Wine is focused on the next phase of its journey.

This includes progressing towards ISO 14001 certification, continuing to refine its insetting programme, and developing and executing a decarbonisation plan grounded in its more accurate emissions profile. The business is also working towards more regular, quarterly monitoring of emissions, supported by ongoing improvements in data collection and platform use.

As the team continues to build on this work, the focus remains on transparency, accountability, and long-term impact across the wine supply chain.

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