Four years at the top tier, and still raising the bar
Tecna has retained the ESSA Tier 5 Sustainability Accreditation for the fourth consecutive year, holding the highest level of sustainability recognition available to suppliers in the UK events and exhibitions industry every year since 2023. When we first achieved it, we became the first UK exhibition stand builder to reach this new top tier, and keeping it matters to us even more than achieving it, because the assessment is repeated every year and demands evidence of continued progress rather than a repeat of last year’s results.
For the marketing managers, events teams and show organisers we work with, the accreditation offers independent proof that the partner building their stand is held to a measurable, audited standard on sustainability. That proof has become an increasingly important part of how exhibition suppliers are chosen, and of how exhibition budgets are justified against ESG goals.
What the accreditation measures
ESSA, the Event Supplier and Services Association, is the trade body representing contractors and suppliers to the UK events industry, and its Sustainability Accreditation is an independently assessed, points based standard that has to be renewed every year. Companies submit evidence across 12 areas of sustainability management, ranging from carbon footprint calculation, energy management and waste management through to sustainable procurement and staff wellbeing, and external evaluators score that evidence out of 100 points.
Tier 5 is reserved for businesses scoring between 90 and 100, which means sustainability has to be embedded across the whole operation and backed by documentation, certifications, carbon reports and records of practical action. Well written policies earn very little on their own, since the evaluators are looking for measurable outcomes, and because the bar is reassessed annually, holding Tier 5 for four years in a row requires a business to keep improving rather than standing still.
Why it matters to us
We describe ourselves as responsible creators of exhibitions, events and brand experiences, and the word responsible was chosen deliberately. It covers how we handle a client’s budget, how we protect their brand and respect their deadlines, and how we look after the planet while delivering work that pushes the possible. The ESSA assessment is one of the most rigorous ways we have of testing whether that word holds up under independent scrutiny, and four consecutive years at Tier 5 tells us that the habits we have built across the business are working.
Those habits run through every team. Our designers start with reuse in mind, working with our T3 modular system and recyclable substrates so that structures can return for future builds instead of ending up in a skip after a three day show. Our project managers plan logistics to cut unnecessary journeys, our workshop repurposes and donates components that have reached the end of their life with us, and our people give their time to local communities and charities.
Keeping Tier 5 belongs to the whole of Team Tecna, and the annual renewal gives everyone a clear reason to keep looking for the next improvement.
George Green, Sales Director at Tecna, said:
“Holding Tier 5 for a fourth consecutive year means a great deal to everyone at Tecna, because the assessment is repeated every year and asks us to prove, with real evidence, that we have kept improving.
Our clients are under growing pressure to show that their exhibition spend stands up both commercially and environmentally, and we want to make that part of their job easier by giving them verified carbon data, reusable stands and a team that treats their budget and the planet with the same care.
We have never been interested in settling for boring, and we are already working on what year five will look like.”
What it changes for our clients and partners
Exhibitions are a significant line in most marketing budgets, and the people signing off that spend increasingly want to know how it fits with their organisation’s environmental commitments. Procurement teams now regularly ask suppliers to evidence their sustainability credentials, and a marketing manager building the business case for next year’s show programme needs answers that will satisfy a finance director and a sustainability lead as well as a head of marketing. Working with a Tier 5 accredited partner means those answers already exist, independently verified and ready to drop into a tender response or supplier assessment.
Every Tecna stand comes with a carbon footprint report as standard, giving clients documented data they can use in their own ESG reporting in place of estimates or assurances. Across our projects we recycle 92% of waste and save an average of 4.7 tonnes of CO₂ per project, and our Insights service can track and report on the environmental impact of a specific build alongside the engagement data that shows whether the stand did its commercial job.
For show organisers working towards their own sustainability targets, our accreditation gives confidence that the contractors building on their floor are helping to deliver those goals. For experiential and event agencies, it means bringing a build partner into a pitch whose credentials strengthen their own proposal. In each case the accreditation removes a question mark from the buying process, which makes the route from brief to build faster and far more straightforward.
Sustainable and bold, without compromise
There is a lingering assumption in parts of the industry that sustainable stands have to look modest, or that reusable systems put a ceiling on creative ambition, and we have spent years proving otherwise. Our modular, hybrid and bespoke stands are designed to make a strong impression for brands of every size, and the reusable framework underneath them frees up budget for the elements visitors actually experience, from lighting and graphics to interactive technology and hospitality.
Tier 5 sits alongside our ISO 20121 certification for sustainable events management. ISO 20121 examines how we plan and manage sustainability, while the ESSA assessment scores the results we deliver in practice, so together they give our clients two independently audited views of the same commitment. We are proud of the recognition, but the work behind it is what our clients notice on every project, through less waste, smarter use of their budget and stands built to live again at the next show.
Push the Possible, responsibly
Retaining Tier 5 for a fourth year is a milestone the whole team can be proud of, and it raises the standard we expect of ourselves for year five. If you are planning your exhibition programme for the year ahead and want a partner whose sustainability credentials will stand up to scrutiny from procurement, finance and your leadership team, we would love to talk.
Our team will help you shape a brief that delivers real commercial results with a smaller footprint, because we never settle for boring and we have no intention of settling for wasteful either.
