Northern Foods shares were delisted from the London Stock Exchange from 13 May 2011

Responsible food packaging

Northern Foods was one of the first food manufacturers to join the leading grocery retailers in a commitment to reduce the nation’s production of waste of food and food packaging.  Phase 1 of the so-called Courtauld Commitment, an initiative of the government’s Waste Resource Action Programme (WRAP), ran for five years until March 2010, and is expected to report soon that it has succeeded in one of its primary aims of halting the growth in grocery packaging.

Northern Foods has been pleased to achieve this standard. And as well as setting our own targets for food packaging reduction, we also work with our retail customers to help them achieve their targets.  For example, we have developed reduced-weight foam trays for ready-meals, and our sandwich packaging is now fully recyclable, being made from recyclable cardboard with a biodegradable window. As part of our work with M&S, we have removed the cardboard support from rolls packaging, saving 52 tonnes of cardboard a year, which was part of a companywide saving in one year of 5,146 tonnes of cardboard.

We constantly review procedures and challenge suppliers and retailers to help deliver these packaging reduction commitments. 

Northern Foods has now signed up to Phase 2 of the Courtauld Commitment, and is the first major manufacturer of retailer-own-label products to do so.  Phase 2 has a new set of targets, to be achieved by 2012, based around the broad aim for more sustainable use of resources over the lifecycle of products as they pass through the grocery supply chain.  They are:

  • In grocery packaging: a 10 per cent reduction in carbon impact,  to be achieved by combinations of reduced weight, increased recycled content, and increased recycling
  • In UK households: a four per cent reduction in all food and drink waste
  • Throughout the traditional grocery supply chain: a five per cent reduction in product waste and packaging waste

 

Achievements to April 2010
Nil growth in packaging by weight maintained since 2008

Target to April 2011
Continued nil growth in packaging by weight

Longer-term targets
To work collectively with our co-signatories in Phase 2 of the Courtauld Commitment to deliver its targets by 2012.

 

Individual site initiatives
Goodfella's pizza boxes were made more robust, increasing packaging by four per cent, but allowing a much bigger reduction in the outer packaging needed for transporting the pizzas to the supermarkets. In addition to saving a net 4,000 tonnes of packaging, the new boxes can also be stacked higher on the pallet, reducing the number of lorry journeys, and saving an estimated one million transport miles.

 At Fox's biscuits, new packaging standards use only:

  • 100 per cent recyclable cartons approved by the Forestry Stewardship Council
  • Outer packaging containing a minimum of 50 per cent recycled content
  • Plastic inserts containing a minimum of 50 per cent recycled plastics

In the first 18 months during which these changes were introduced the savings were: 69 tonnes of plastics and 37 tonnes of cardboard.