Packaging

Our packaging is meant to protect the products while creating as little environmental impact as possible.

The packaging has a vital role to ensure that when you get the product, it will be as we planned and as you want it. It will protect the product at all stages, from production via transportation and the supermarket to your kitchen, while at the same time keeping it fresh for as long as possible. This way the package may also help reduce food waste. We also want the environmental impact of the packaging to be as low as possible.

When we develop and design our packaging, we take into account how the packaging can help reduce food waste and how the packaging itself will affect the environment.

How packaging can help reduce food waste

Important aspects to consider when thinking about how packaging can help reduce food waste are the size of the package, how easily it can be used and emptied and ensuring that it gives the best possible protection to the product. Our ambition is to review our package sizes so that it becomes less residues for the end consumer.

Collaboration to reduce food wastage

To continuously improve our efforts, we are participating in a two-year project funded by Sweden’s Innovation Agency VINNOVA about packaging systems to reduce food waste. In the project, we have identified waste and improvement opportunities in the value chain, starting from the food producer. Based on the result ideas for innovative packaging solutions that can reduce waste are being developed. The participants represent the entire value chain: material and packaging producers, food producers, supermarkets, authorities, research institutes and universities, recycling businesses and the Stockholm Consumer Cooperative Society.

Environmental impact of packaging

As regards to the environmental impact of packaging itself, important factors include weight, choice of materials, recycling and no hazardous substances.

Less material used for packaging

We are constantly striving to make our packaging as resource-efficient as possible and reduce the amount of materials without compromising function. We have already reduced the amount of packaging material by 11 percent for all tortillas manufactured in Sweden since 2013, and we have decreased our use of aluminium by replacing the protective aluminium film on our dip sauces with a metallised plastic film.

Easy-to-recycle packaging

We also try to make it easier for you to recycle the package when it is empty. We do our best to make it simple to sort the package and separate various materials, such as plastic and glass. We also want to minimise the amount of unwanted substances in the packaging materials. One example is Bisphenol A, where we had aimed that no packages would contain the substance by the end of 2016. For the majority of our packaging, the goal is achieved, and for the few remaining packages, the goal is that they will be free from Bisphenol A in the middle of 2017.