Pilgrims Food Masters - Fixing the plastic problem
21 September 2023
Pilgrim’s Food Masters use 5,000 tonnes of rigid plastic packaging a year and most of their plastic packaging was not recyclable. Black CPET, used in the industry for years was their biggest problem.
Topics
They set themselves the challenge to deliver a tray that would be fully recyclable and more importantly, made from a material that uses post-consumer recycled material, creating a truly circular economy.
Pilgrim's Food Masters undertook extensive research to understand the challenges of the recycle market, this involved visiting plastic recovery facilities, capturing data, interviewing experts, and studying the component of materials.
They were the first to market with a move to a closed loop system, using a truly circular food packaging solution called 'evolve'.
Evolve food trays are derived from post-consumer recycled materials and have the same technical spec as CPET but no carbon black pigment. This tray type is now used across their Chilled and Frozen ready meals business.
The Sustainable Packaging Initiative 2023 award was Sponsored by 4C