Danish Crown has published a new packaging strategy that aims to ensure the company’s entire range of products are sold in recyclable packaging by 2030, and reduce its packaging volumes by 30%.
One of Europe’s largest producers of pork, Danish Crown uses 88,600 tonnes of packaging each year to cover its wide range of products, including pork roasts, steaks, barbecue sausage and veggie mince.
The strategy entitled Reduced volumes, increased recyclability was presented in Herning, Denmark, at Foodexpo, the largest food trade fair in the Nordics.
The new targets build on existing goals set by the company, such as its commitment to ensuring 90% of its packaging is recyclable by 2025, and the consumption of packaging must be reduced by 15% during the same period.
Danish Crown has initiated a new Supplier Driven Innovation Programme, inviting both established business and innovative start-ups to contribute to developing what it describes as the packaging of tomorrow. Among other things, Danish Crown says it has set a goal of finding a solution that will make large parts of its packaging biodegradable.
It has also joined the Science Based Targets Initiative, which is a partnership between the UN Global Compact, the World Resources Institute (WRI), CDP and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), which seeks to help companies reduce greenhouse gas emissions to such an extent that it contributes enough to keep the global temperature rise to a maximum of 1.5 degrees.
Climate neutrality by 2050
Lars Feldskou, group CPO at Danish Crown, said: “It is essential for Danish Crown’s sustainability ambitions that we reduce our consumption of packaging and that the packaging we use is recyclable. As a business, we have made a commitment to reducing our carbon footprint by 50 % by 2030 and to be climate neutral (net zero) by 2050, and while we are obviously aware, that most of our emissions are from the farm-level, we simply cannot reach these goals if we don’t consider all levels of our company.”
Food safety is a top priority
Danish Crown said that issues such as food safety, shelf life and quality are all top priorities when it comes to designing and implementing recyclable packaging.
Feldskou added: “We will never compromise on the food safety, shelf life or quality of our products when selecting new packaging. Not even if the packaging in question achieves a high sustainability score. This prioritisation is non-debatable, and we are confident that consumers fully agree with us on that point.”
This story was originally published on a previous version of the Meat Management website and so there may be some missing images and formatting issues.
