Naked’s Big Eat reduces plastic by 50%

Rebranding and repackaging Symington’s Naked ‘The BIG One’ to ‘BIG EAT’ has resulted in an immediate plastic saving of over 50%.

Coupled with the advantage of the Greiner Packaging’s K3 cardboard-plastic packaging being perfectly recyclable, Naked is the first UK food brand to use the newly improved and more visible tear-tab to make the process of separating the cardboard wrap from the plastic cup as easy as possible.

Symington’s marketing director Kevin Butterworth said after the brand team identified the opportunity to review the packaging formats, they did some work to discover who was choosing a larger format, and the consumption occasions. A standard pot was hitting more of a snacking occasion and the large pack was popular for lunch or an evening meal.

“We wanted to know if consumers needed to have the physically bigger pot to justify the occasion and quickly reconciled that they didn’t. This led us to rebranding Naked’s ‘The BIG One’ to ‘BIG EAT’.

“We discovered that there needed to be a demonstrable difference between the core range and the BIG EAT, but we also learned that consumers were massively favourable towards any format that reduced its plastic.”

Working closely with Greiner Packaging, Symington’s carried out a full review of the packaging options.

For the BIG EAT, they reduced the diameter from 116mm to 95mm, to match the core range. This resulted in an immediate plastic saving of over 50%. Coupled with the advantage of the K3 cardboard-plastic packaging being perfectly recyclable, the pack format change has made a significant contribution to our mission to reduce the impact our packaging has on the environment.

Butterworth said: “By moving to the new taller cup for BIG EAT, we also slightly reduced the size of the cups for our core range to underline the value differentiation, but without reducing the portion size.

“Throughout the project, the Greiner Packaging team worked closely with us, identifying the most suitable packaging solutions, and pushed the boundaries to create the new pack size which was outside what its existing machinery could produce at that time.”

He added that many factors contributed to the success of the project, saying consumers were choosing the larger pack and for which occasion, and rationalising the format to match the in-store footprint of our standard product line delivered improved operational efficiency.

There is also a significant advantage from the plastic saving and recyclability of Greiner Packaging’s K3. Symington’s is on a journey to full recyclability, and is currently investigating a range of options to also make the lid recyclable.

The Greiner Packaging K3 pack is perfectly recyclable, as consumers can easily separate the cardboard wrap from the plastic cup. Naked has been the first food brand in the UK to use Greiner Packaging’s newly improved and more visible tear-tab to make the process as easy as possible. We use the reverse of the wrap not just to show the fill-level, but also to engage Naked fans with more about our brand, and how they can be part of our sustainability journey.

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