Package of the Month
Colpac Provides Foodservice Versatility with Tower Trays™
The new trays allow foodservice providers with enhanced versatility for hot and ambient dishes.
The trays are well suited to Quick Service Restaurants (QSR), street food and event catering.
Colpac’s new and improved Tower Trays™ offer a convenient, multi-purpose packaging solution. They operate as single trays to eat from in-store or can be locked together to form a secure box to-go, enabling flexibility for foodservice operators.
Safe for use with hot or ambient dishes, the trays are well suited to Quick Service Restaurants (QSR), street food and event catering, with early interest from sports stadiums and high-end burger chains. Whether foodservice operators are looking to serve burgers and fries at a dine-in outlet, or package loaded nachos to-go within a busy arena, Colpac’s Tower Trays™ offer simplicity and functionality.
They can be easily filled as standalone trays back-of-house, due to wide apertures, and served on-site or handed directly to customers. Additionally, they can be interlocked as a base and lid to take away, with closures that can be secured in seconds. This, combined with their unique silhouette, offers a point of differentiation in a crowded market.
For foodservice providers that are short of storage back-of-house, Colpac’s Tower Trays™ reduce SKUs required as they are functional as trays and/or bases and lids. They offer additional space efficiency as they are nested in transport and storage.
Working with customers to gather feedback throughout development, Colpac developed four sizes across square and rectangular formats. With medium and large tray depths for each shape, the sizes can be used interchangeably to suit food contents. The square Tower Trays™ offer similar dimensions to a traditional clamshell and the rectangular tower trays are suitable for larger dishes such as pie and chips or even fries to share.
The Tower Trays™ are manufactured at Colpac’s factory in the South of England, minimizing lead times for UK and European customers. They are made from FSC® certified, recyclable and compostable paperboard which contains recycled material.
The new trays allow foodservice providers with enhanced versatility for hot and ambient dishes.
The new trays allow foodservice providers with enhanced versatility for hot and ambient dishes.
Courtesy of Colpac
Tesco Switches to Paper Packaging for Dried Pasta
Customers picking up pasta in Tesco stores will notice a big change in how some of it is packaged.
To reduce the amount of plastic packaging it uses, Tesco has moved its Finest range of dried pasta into paper packaging, saving more than 10 million pieces of plastic a year, weighing more than 30 tonnes.
In total, 10 lines have moved into the new packaging, which will also be available in Tesco Express stores. The new packs are 100% recyclable and can be put into household recycling bins.
Claire Lorains, Tesco Group Sustainability and Quality Director, said: “Removing unnecessary plastic is an important way that Tesco can reduce its environmental impact. The new paper packaging works just as well as the old plastic but can be popped into your normal recycling bin with other paper.
“We're proud of the work we’ve done so far to reduce the plastic we use at Tesco but will continue to look for ways to do more.”
Tesco’s 4Rs packaging 4Rs (Remove, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) strategy, has been in place since 2019 and so far, more than 2.3 billion pieces of plastic have been removed from its UK business.
Innovations in 2024 included:
- Becoming the first supermarket to scrap plastic packaging for its own brand pocket tissue multi-packs replacing it with recyclable paper and saving more than 55 million pieces of soft plastic
- Focusing on incorporating recycled materials, Tesco launched a new range of luxury soft toilet rolls and kitchen towels made from cardboard recycled from home delivery boxes, cardboard tubes from toilet rolls, and corrugated card waste. The innovative pulp production process uses less water, chemicals and energy compared to using traditional tree fiber as the raw material.
Courtesy of Tesco
Walkers Chocolates Transitions to Recyclable Paper Wrappers for Pair of Brands
Walkers Chocolates is switching its popular own brand Turkish Delight and Mint Cream chocolate bars into EvoPak RCM, a 100% recyclable paper wrapper. The bars began rolling out late last year.
Unlike conventional paper packaging which often contains polyethylene, consumers can dispose of the new Walkers’ wrapper in their normal curbside recycling collection along with their other paper recyclable items. Currently, it is only possible to recycle similar wrappers by returning them to store, which isn’t convenient for consumers and in many cases, where recycling processes aren’t carefully controlled, the wrapper still ends up in landfill or incinerated. Significantly, if littered, the new wrapper does not produce harmful microplastics when it breaks down, which cause serious damage to the environment and animal health.
Developed by EvoPak, a manufacturer of sustainable paper based flexible packaging, the new paper wrapper (known as RCM) uses the same environmentally friendly technology as the world’s first fully recyclable crisp packet – the innovative polymer, Hydropol™, developed by Aquapak, which is used in place of conventional plastic.
To keep the chocolate fresh and in good condition in transit and on the shelf, the packaging needs to provide protection from oxygen, seal well on standard packaging equipment and be easy to print on. Hydropol™ provides all this functionality as well as offering multiple safe end-of-life disposal options.
Hydropol™ allows paper to remain fully recyclable and compostable and is even compatible with anaerobic digestion. Thanks to its solubility it doesn’t interfere with the recycling process and can allow up to 100% paper fiber recovery in standard mills.
The wrappers have been certified as recyclable in standard paper recycling mills by OPRL, the only evidence-based on pack recycling labelling scheme. This means they feature the green recycle logo and can be disposed of in consumer curbside collections along with other paper material, unlike other wrappers.
