2006 press releases

Northern Foods today announced that it was one of the UK’s first three food manufacturers to sign the Courtauld Commitment, signalling its pledge to further reduce packaging waste across its business.

The Courtauld Commitment was launched in July 2005 when 13 top grocery retailers joined forces with WRAP (Waste and Resources Action Programme) to commit to waste minimisation. The aim of the agreement is to reduce the amount of packaging and food waste that is thrown away by households in the UK.

At a conference in London today, WRAP announced it was to expand the agreement to include food manufacturers, with Northern Foods leading the way as one of the first companies to sign up, alongside Unilever and Heinz.

Northern Foods already has a strong reputation for packaging innovation, working in partnership with its retailer customers and WRAP, the company has developed award-winning reduced weight, ready meal foam trays and biodegradable sandwich packaging.

Norman Pickavance, Northern Foods Corporate Services Director, said: “There are real opportunities to reduce waste across the supply chain. We believe that we have a responsibility to play an active role in this important initiative.

“Over the past 12 months we have helped our retailer partners make huge strides in their waste reduction through our packaging innovation and expertise. We will continue with this agenda and are now expanding innovation in this area to our major brands.”

Notes

Northern Foods CR programme
Signing the Courtauld Commitment is part of Northern Foods’ overall corporate responsibility programme which includes a number of initiatives under the theme Trusted Supply Chain.
Initiatives include:

• Installing over 1,000 energy and utility monitoring metres at our manufacturing sites to support our energy reduction targets
• Recycling used cooking oils for conversion into bio fuels
• Segregation of all of our waste to maximise the amount we recycle
• Working with WRAP to reduce packaging waste

Further details can be found in Trusted supply chain

The Courtauld Commitment
The Courtauld Commitment is between the 13 retailers and WRAP, and was developed in partnership with Defra, the Scottish Executive, the Welsh Assembly Government, the British and Scottish Retails Consortia and the IGD.At a Ministerial meeting at the Courtauld Gallery last year with Environment Minister Elliot Morley and WRAP Chief Executive Jennie Price, senior representatives from Asda, Boots, Budgens, the Co-operative Group, Londis, Iceland, Kwik Save, Marks & Spencer, Morrison’s, Sainsbury’s, Somerfield, Tesco and Waitrose pledged their commitment at executive level to supporting WRAP in achieving its objectives.

WRAP
WRAP works in partnership to encourage and enable businesses and consumers to be more efficient in their use of materials and recycle more things more often. This helps to minimise landfill, reduce carbon emissions and improve our environment.
Established as a not-for-profit company in 2000, WRAP is backed by Government funding from Defra and the devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Working in seven key areas (Construction, Retail, Manufacturing, Organics, Business Growth, Behavioural Change, and Local Authority Support), WRAP’s work focuses on market development and support to drive forward recycling and materials resource efficiency within these sectors, as well as wider communications and awareness activities including the multi-media national Recycle Now campaign for England.
More information on all of WRAP’s programmes can be found at www.wrap.org.uk