Food brand owner Lamb Weston has announced a packaging innovation and is selling frozen pre-fried potato products in packing made from used cooking oil (UCO).
Teaming up with Sabic, Lamb Weston has brought to market what it describes as low-weight sustainable packaging bags made with a thin coextrusion film structure. It said at least 60% of the packaging is made with polymer using bio-feedstock from UCO, reducing its reliance on fossil fuels to create the packing.
Oil is collected from Lamb Weston’s production sites which is then converted to bio-feedstock to produce certified bio-renewable Sabic HDPE (high-density polyethylene) and Supeer mLLDPE (metallocene linear low-density polyethylene) polymers. Oerlemans Plastics, a member of film manufacturer Opack Group, then converts these polymers to a multilayer PE film for Lamb Weston’s pre-fried frozen potato products.
Khaled Al-Jalawi, global director of circular economy business at Sabic, said: “Such a project demonstrates the concept of circularity as it better utilise the UCO to produce circular polymers that is designed for recyclability and via a closed loop approach.”
The packaging innovation was launched by Lamb Weston in September in the UK and the Netherlands, but the plan is to introduce it to further markets in due course.
Sebastiaan Besems, vice president of commercial for the EMEA region at Lamb Weston, commented: “Distributors, retailers and consumers have become increasingly conscious of their environmental impact and show a growing preference for more sustainable packaging.
“We have anticipated this trend and developed an industry-leading bio-circular retail packaging solution for our pre-fried frozen potato products that provides a highly responsible value proposition. As part of our ambitious sustainability plans and innovations for the frozen potato category, the brand’s new European retail pack is made with 60% bio-circular plastic originating from Lamb Weston’s used cooking oil and is ISCC-plus certified.”
He added: “By using Sabic’s bio-renewable polymer, less and better packaging, this innovation reduces the carbon footprint of our retail bags by 30%, aligning with consumer expectations that FMCG brands are as environmentally friendly as possible.”
The carbon footprint reduction of 30% is calculated against previous Lamb Weston retail packaging, which was made from 100% fossil-based material and 20% thicker PE-film.
Lamb Weston supplies McDonald’s in the US, and sells multiple potato product ranges direct to consumers around the globe.
Read more about packaging innovation on Green Retail World
[image credit: Lamb Weston]
