News

Once upon a time it was the glass bottle. Then, as the doorstep ceded ground to the supermarket trolley, it was the gable-top carton and latterly the poly-bottle. Now, in the wake of a retail knee-jerk response to consumer concerns about sustainability, it may soon be the turn of the lighter-weight pouch to deliver the nation’s daily pint of milk.

According to the Milk Development Council, we’re each drinking on average around three pints of milk a week, more than 70% of which is supplied by the big four multiples. For a population in excess of 60 million, that adds up to an awful lot of spent packaging wending its way into the waste stream. And while the plastic bag has hitherto borne most of the brunt in terms of righteous environmental indignation, it surely can’t be too long before HDPE and LDPE take their turn in the spotlight.

The flexible pouch has undoubtedly made significant inroads within other categories once the preserve of a more rigid format – soups, sauces and soapsuds among others – but how viable a proposition might the thin film alternative be for other liquids such as dairy products?

Figures released by Euromonitor suggest the format will be successful. Since 1998, the use of stand-up pouches has expanded by 94.7% across Western Europe, amounting to 99.2 million units produced last year. Growth of all flexible packaging applications for dairy throughout the UK has risen by 14.5% over the same period; less dramatic than in mainland Europe, but definitely on the right track.

Milk out of a bag isn’t new; Sainsbury’s ran it on a selected trial basis about six years ago, and indeed the format was in evidence in Scotland during the early 1990s. What is causing it to be revisited now is a combination of environmental pressures, particularly from Courtauld Committment signatories, driving strategies towards material reduction, and the opportunity for on-shelf differentiation in support of low-profile branding.

Leading the charge is the Welsh co-operative Calon Wen, which is currently supplying one-litre flexible film packs of organic milk to selected Waitrose outlets within London and the dairy’s North Wales home territory.

According to managing director Roger Kerr, of the 15-20 million litres of milk that Calon Wen produces each year, a significant proportion is accounted for by its own brand. “From our perspective, as a small co-operative, in order to move out of Wales we needed to find something that could offer us a USP to differentiate ourselves from the other, bigger branded milks such as Rachel’s Organic and Yeo Valley.”

Calon Wen is no novice in seeking to elbow its way onto the supermarket shelves, and was in fact the first branded milk to be supplied into Tesco four years ago. However, Kerr believes that a proprietary flexible packaging solution developed by the Canadian Glopak division of the US-based Hood Packaging Corporation, which was recently installed at co-packer Tomlinson Dairies, will now provide the necessary marketing edge to make its presence properly felt.

The concept is very simple, says Tomlinson’s managing director Philip Tomlinson. “It’s a three-layer PE one-litre capacity bag that is effectively a cartridge that fits into a rigid plastic jug with a lid. You insert the bag, snip off the corner and then pour the milk. The jug is of course re-usable time and time again.

“We first looked at this four years ago and, while we were impressed, we felt it was too early for the UK market. When we were re-approached, the increased concern over environmental issues made it a lot more viable. We installed the system at the end of last year, and then brought it to Calon Wen’s attention.”

Glopak specialises in the manufacture of vertical form, fill and seal equipment for use in the dairy and bakery sectors, with a capability of producing upwards of 9,000 PE pouches per hour ranging in size from 150ml up to two litres and which can be used for any liquid, says UK representative Bill Whitehill.

“When you take into account that a one-litre poly-bottle weighs 28 grams compared with just 6 grams for a similar-sized pouch with good sealability and durability properties as well as UV protection, the format’s environmental credentials are outstanding in terms of material reduction.

“There’s nothing new about this system – it’s been established for 30 years – but there’s now a lot of re-development going into it to make sure it matches present day market requirements. The UK is finally catching up with the rest of the world.”

For a smaller dairy without its own blow-moulding facility, the appeal of a single roll of film as opposed to a 40-foot container load is self-evident. To date, Glopak has supplied its flexible pouch solution to three UK operations of a similar size to Calon Wen. Despite the existing high levels of investment in poly-bottle dairy production at the volume end of the market, Whitehill is bullish about prospects for wider adoption.

“The big producers will definitely be considering it, because their customers have a duty to consider the weight of a pack and its impact on the environment. Not only would you get Tesco with Wiseman, but also Marks & Spencer and Dairy Crest. Then there’s Asda with Arla; they all have a similar brief. Stuart Rose at M&S recently stood up and said ‘we’ll save £250m next year’. Well, we want to help him to do that.”

Incremental growth
So too, no doubt, does ex-Tetra Pak owner Hans Rausing, whose investment in the chalk-based Ecolean pouch and filling system is in the hands of UK distributor National Flexible.

“It’s more designed than a pillow-bag as it incorporates an air-filled handle and a pouring spout, so it acts as a free-standing pack,” says marketing manager Andy Smith. “Film is supplied on a reel which feeds through an Ecolean filling machine to produce pouch sizes ranging from 200ml up to one litre at around 2,900 per hour.”

While Ecolean sells around 300 million of its pouches made from 40% chalk each year across 40 different countries, Smith acknowledges that commitment to the poly-bottle within the UK dairy industry may limit the uptake to a certain extent. “Packaging formats don’t change overnight, especially when there’s that level of investment involved, so we anticipate that adoption will be incremental rather than wholesale.

“There are any number of reasons why this format is better than, say, HDPE, glass or gable-top cartons: the most obvious being the reduction in packaging weight and waste. Anyone who has made some sort of commitment to the Courtauld agreement has got to consider those issues.

“As a product, we’ve got to take it to where it can best and most easily fit: niche, high-value products are probably a good place to start rather than trying to tackle the bulk white milk market head on.”

There are already niche customers for Ecolean in the UK. Daylesford Organic dairy in Staffordshire uses Ecolean packs for its milk, receiving a design award from D&AD.

Meanwhile, less liquid forms of dairy produce – for example, Yogz Squeezems, a fromage frais and fruit snack product
packed in Alcan’s two-ply laminate 12-micron polyester and 50-micron PE, aimed squarely at children and hence tomorrow’s adult milk purchasers – are undeniably paving a more flexible way. And with Dairy UK predicting higher milk prices as a result of this summer’s floods, maybe the pouch solution couldn’t be more timely.

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DESIGN MATTERS
Formed in 2001, Giraffe Innovation is a management and design consultancy specialising in the implementation of sustainable strategies, and co-founder Rob Holdaway says it spends a lot of its time helping clients to avoid “doing the wrong thing well”. According to him, Calon Wen appears to be doing the exact opposite.

“If you are going to make green claims then you have to underpin them. There’s nothing wrong with dematerialising the pouch, but pouches and films aren’t collected at the kerbside; they won’t be recycled, they’ll go to landfill. Plastic recycling in the UK is at a very immature stage. PET and HDPE bottles are collected, and there’s a kind of design language associated with them that any idiot at the recycling facility is able to understand.”

He is worried that the material choice has been made for the wrong reasons, even though it is not ideally suited to this liquid application. “You have to design something that people want, and that is actually of benefit. Calon Wen has differentiated itself in the market, but it’s done it in a bad way. Not only does this fall short of the mark aesthetically, but, in engineering terms, it’s feeble. On top of that, the jug hasn’t got a design integrity that would make me want to reuse it.

“The crucial thing with any reusable system is how many uses would offset the energy needed to make it a better option. The break-even point is often not clear-cut. What’s the break-even point here? I could be wrong, but I bet they haven’t even thought about it.”

Calon Wen director Iwan Jones refutes this. “From August these jugs will be manufactured in the UK and the ‘break-even point’ is being calculated. We believe that the combination of our packaging, local processing and organic practices gives our milk truly eco credentials,” he says.

Waitrose dairy buyer Jane Hills also defends the Calon Wen packs. “If such milk jugs were used in place of poly-bottles nationwide, close to 100,000 tonnes of plastic could be saved each year.”