Back in 2019, the team at our Tivetshall St Margaret Maltings embarked on a project to reduce the amount of plastic covering each pallet of bagged malt that leaves the site.
At that time, the pallets were wrapped in two layers of hooded plastic to ensure stability and the goal was to reduce this, while also improving that robustness during transit to our customers across the world.
The focus of this began by looking at our 25kg bags. Working with the R&D department of our bag supplier LC Packaging, we trialled a cohesive coating on the bags.
This was found to reduce the chances of the bags slipping during delivery while stacked and, as a result, the cohesive coating was permanently added to the bags.
We then started to work with a new provider of hooder material. The new hooding material is more flexible and, therefore, has a greater shrink force holding the product to the pallet with greater efficiency. This material is also 100% recyclable polyethylene (PE).
It means that our pallets are now wrapped with one layer of hooder material instead of two and has resulted in a 45% reduction in plastic use for this purpose: from 68 tonnes per year to 36 tonnes per year. We will continue to look for ways to reduce this further.
These on-site developments, combined with constant communication with our third-party haulage partners, have also resulted in a much-improved quality of delivery for our bagged malt customers.
We are able to track customer feedback on deliveries through our Rate Your Delivery survey, which we launched in 2021.
For more information on our sustainability efforts, visit our dedicated Sustainability page here.