Tesco aspires to save 12.5 million cardboard rolls from being produced every year with its new tubeless design for aluminium kitchen foil.
Claimed to be the first of its kind in the UK, the tubeless foil is facilitated by a state-of-the-art rolling machine. It rolls the foil around a spindle featuring air vents, which are then pumped with air and allows the foil to be gently released.
The new design hopes to save 330 tonnes of cardboard every year compared to foil wrapped around tubes.
“This new machine has revolutionized foil production, saving hundreds of tonnes of cardboard from needlessly being made in the first place,” said Bronwen Williams, technical manager at Tesco. “We are continually looking at ways in which we can cut down on packaging in order to help the environment and hope, after starting with our top-selling kitchen foil line, that we will be able to apply this to the rest of our foil range.”
In a related development, Rotomac’s ICEBREAKER 167 – CORELESS machine is capable of producing coreless aluminium foil rolls. It was nominated for a Sustainability Award under the pre-commercialized Climate category in 2023.
Reportedly, Tesco has reduced its packaging by over 4,500 tonnes since 2020 in line with its 4Rs packaging strategy; this aims to remove packaging where possible, otherwise reducing or reusing it and recycling the remainder.
The retailer sought to contribute to these goals by doubling the amount of paper sold on its toilet rolls back in 2022. Aldi recently adopted a similar strategy, hoping to remove 60 tonnes of plastic packaging from its own-brand lines every year and lower emissions during product delivery.
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