T.3 STEEPLE analysis questions for IB Business Management

Areco Leather

[1] Curtiembre Areco SA (Areco Leather) is a family-owned company in Buenos Aires province, Argentina. It tans cattle hides and makes belts, bags and saddles, which it sells through 30 shops across Argentina. It employs 180 people, many of them craftspeople trained over decades.

[2] Argentina’s economy has been unstable: inflation was above 100 % in 2023 and 2024, and the peso lost much of its value. Domestic sales of Areco’s products have fallen by a third since 2022. However, the weak peso has made Argentine leather cheaper for foreign buyers, and a fashion house in Milan has asked Areco to supply 5 000 handbags a year.

[3] Areco’s managing director, Lucía Fernández, has proposed a new strategic objective: “to earn 50 % of our revenue from exports by 2030”. Areco has no export experience, and its website is only in Spanish. Its leather has a strong reputation for quality in Argentina.

[4] Tanneries use large amounts of water and chemicals. New European Union rules will require importers to show that leather is not linked to deforestation. Areco buys hides from many small ranches, some of them in the Chaco region, where forest is being cleared for cattle.

Kaleva Print Oy is a Finnish company that prints regional newspapers and earns most of its revenue from selling advertising space in them. Spending on newspaper advertising in Finland fell from €310 million in 2023 to €263.5 million in 2025, as advertisers moved to social media and search engines. Kaleva Print’s market share over the same period stayed at about 18 %.

Wimbi Seaweed Co-operative (WSC)

Read the resources and answer the questions that follow.

Wimbi Seaweed Co-operative (WSC) is a co-operative of 260 women seaweed farmers in Paje, on the east coast of Zanzibar, Tanzania. Members tie seaweed to ropes on wooden stakes in the shallow lagoon, harvest it every six weeks and dry it in the sun. Most of the dried seaweed is sold to exporters, who sell it to factories abroad that extract carrageenan*. In 2020 WSC also opened a small workshop where 22 members make seaweed soap for hotels. For many members, seaweed is the only income they control themselves.

* carrageenan: a substance extracted from seaweed and used to thicken foods, toothpaste and cosmetics.

Image: three women in bright kangas wading knee-deep in a turquoise lagoon, carrying baskets of red seaweed. In the corner, a bar of green soap wrapped in recycled paper with the label “Wimbi – from our sea, by our hands”.

Resource 1 – News article from the *Zanzibar Coast Herald*

Warming waters threaten the seaweed women of the east coast

Higher sea temperatures are killing seaweed in Zanzibar’s shallow lagoons, where the water heats up quickly at low tide. Farmers say crops that once grew in six weeks now often rot before harvest. Scientists expect the problem to get worse. Deeper, cooler water is better for growing, but it needs boats and floating lines, and many women farmers cannot swim.

Table 1: WSC’s seaweed output and price

TZS = Tanzanian shillings. USD 1 ≈ TZS 2 600.

Resource 2 – Email from Nordkapp Hydrocolloids to WSC’s chair, Mwanaisha Juma

From: Director, East Africa, Nordkapp Hydrocolloids

To: Mwanaisha Juma, Chair, WSC

Subject: Proposal for a long-term partnership

Nordkapp, a Norwegian multinational, plans to build Zanzibar’s first carrageenan processing plant at Fumba, employing 120 people. We propose a five-year contract to buy all of WSC’s seaweed at a guaranteed price of TZS 1 100 per kg, if WSC grows a deep-water variety on floating lines.

Nordkapp will supply boats, lines and training on credit, repaid by deducting TZS 150 per kg from the price. WSC must supply at least 400 tonnes a year and may not sell seaweed to any other buyer during the contract.

Resource 3 – Social media posts from Zuhura, daughter of a WSC member

My mother has farmed seaweed for 25 years. This year she lost half her crop to the heat. She says the soap workshop is the best thing WSC ever did – the hotel guests love it and it pays every month. [1/2]

Now a foreign company wants the women to farm in deep water. Only the men have boats. Who will really earn the money – my mother, or the men with boats? #SeaweedWomen #Zanzibar [2/2]

Resource 4 – WSC’s soap workshop: figures for 2025

Resource 5 – Survey of WSC members (180 replies)

Resource 6 – Statement from Pwani Hai, a marine conservation NGO

“We welcome investment in Zanzibar, and the government has offered Nordkapp a seven-year tax holiday. But floating lines in deeper water can damage coral and block fishermen’s routes. Nordkapp closed a similar plant in another country after six years when world carrageenan prices fell. Communities must not become dependent on one foreign buyer.”

Casa Verde Construcciones

[1] Casa Verde Construcciones SA de CV builds housing estates around Monterrey, Mexico. It was founded in 1998 by the Garza family and is now one of the largest homebuilders in the state of Nuevo León, with 1 100 employees and many subcontractors.

[2] In 2024 Casa Verde launched a marketing campaign called “Hogares que respiran” (homes that breathe). Its advertisements show trees, solar panels and families on bicycles. Its website says that it is “committed to the planet”. However, only 5 % of its new homes have solar panels, and most of its estates are built on the edge of the city, far from public transport.

[3] In 2025 a group of journalists accused Casa Verde of “greenwashing”. They reported that one of its estates had been built on land that floods, and that the company had cleared 40 hectares of native scrubland. Monterrey also suffered a severe water shortage in 2022, and the state government is now considering stricter rules on water use in new homes.

[4] The company’s new director of sustainability, Daniela Garza, argues that “CSR is good for business” and wants Casa Verde to make every new home water-efficient and to plant two trees for every tree it removes. Her uncle, the chief executive, says that buyers care only about price and location.

Dommel Cycles

[1] Dommel Cycles (DC) is a private limited company in Utrecht, the Netherlands, that designs and assembles electric cargo bikes. Its customers are mainly young families and small delivery businesses. DC’s single assembly line can produce a maximum of 8 000 bikes a year.

[2] Sales have grown every year since 2021 (Table 1). Lotte Bosman, DC’s marketing director, has forecast sales of 9 500 bikes for 2026. Her forecast extends the recent trend and assumes that the Dutch government will introduce a subsidy of €1 000 for every household that buys a cargo bike. The subsidy has been proposed but has not yet been approved by parliament.

[3] Based on Lotte’s forecast, the operations director, Joost Bakker, wants to build a second assembly line costing €2.4 million, financed by a bank loan. The finance director, Lieke Jansen, is cautious. She points out that two Chinese manufacturers have entered the Dutch market with cheaper models, and that DC’s forecast for 2025 was 8 % higher than actual sales.

Table 1: DC’s sales of cargo bikes (units), 2021–2026

Kauri Ridge Restoration Ltd (KRR)

Read the resources and answer the questions that follow.

Kauri Ridge Restoration Ltd (KRR) is a social enterprise in Whangārei, Northland, New Zealand. It is owned by a charitable trust and was founded in 2018 by Wiremu Hēnare and Claire Dawson. KRR employs 42 young people aged 16–24 who had left school without a job or training place; many are Māori from local communities. Working in planting crews, they restore native forest on steep, eroded farmland while earning a wage and gaining qualifications. KRR grows its own native seedlings in a nursery. After 12 months, 68 % of its trainees move into a job or further study.

Image: a crew of young people in hi-vis vests and gumboots planting small native trees on a green hillside above a river. Rows of seedlings in black pots wait at the top of the slope. Caption: “Kauri Ridge – growing forests, growing futures”.

Resource 1 – News article from the *Northland Business Weekly*

Tree-planting youth crews face funding drought

A government programme that paid for native planting on private land has been scaled back, and contracts for groups like KRR have halved. At the same time, the price of carbon credits that forest owners can sell has fallen sharply. “We’ve gone from relying on one big customer to needing five smaller ones,” says co-founder Claire Dawson.

Table 1: KRR’s revenue streams (NZD 000)

KRR sold 3 000 carbon credits at NZD 85 each in 2023 and 3 600 at NZD 55 each in 2025. Its total costs in 2025 were NZD 1.71 million.

Resource 2 – Social media posts from Tama, a KRR trainee

A year ago I was sleeping till lunchtime and in trouble with the cops. Now I can name 30 native trees in te reo Māori and English and I’ve got my chainsaw ticket. Planted my 10 000th tree today. [1/2]

Heard we might be planting for a fuel company now. Bit weird – planting trees so people feel good about burning petrol? Whatever pays the wages I guess. [2/2]

Resource 3 – Internal email from Claire Dawson to KRR’s trustees

From: Claire Dawson, Co-founder and General Manager

To: Trustees

Subject: Northern Fuel sponsorship proposal

Northern Fuel, a chain of 90 petrol stations, has offered NZD 600 000 a year for five years to pay for KRR to plant 120 hectares a year. It would run an advertising campaign, “Fill up and plant a tree”, saying that its customers’ driving is “carbon neutral”. Our planting would offset only a small fraction of the emissions from the fuel it sells.

It would solve our deficit at once. But our scientist warns that the claim is misleading, and some of our corporate planting customers have said they would not want to be associated with it.

The alternative is to grow our other revenue streams, especially the nursery (see the attached figures).

CONFIDENTIAL: this email and any attachments are intended only for the named recipients.

Resource 4 – Costs and figures prepared by KRR’s accountant

Resource 5 – Survey of KRR’s corporate planting customers (24 companies)

Resource 6 – Extract from a consumer protection agency guidance note

Businesses must not make environmental claims that mislead consumers. Claims such as “carbon neutral” must be backed by evidence that the emissions of the product have been measured and fully offset. Businesses that take part in a misleading campaign, including partners and suppliers, may suffer serious damage to their reputation, and the advertiser may be fined.