Milk bottle manufacturer Nampak appears to have backtracked on a commitment to include 50% recycled content in its bottles by 2020.
In an interview with The Grocer magazine, the company says that recycled content is too expensive and that it now intends to focus on lightweighting milk bottles instead for sustainability purposes.
Nampak Plastics Europe commercial director Neil Court-Johnson said in the interview: “[Recycled content] is too expensive and, in the current climate, businesses just can’t afford to pay a premium.”
Analysis undertaken by Nampak suggested that the British retail sector is overpaying on packaging by around £50 million per year.
This is due to outdated technology, the absence of a cohesive plan to tackle waste and reluctance among packaging firms to embrace innovation. This means that retailers were left with increased costs.
Nampak estimated that milk bottles across the industry are currently 20% heavier than they need to be, and a £45.9 million saving in HDPE alone could be achieved through further lightweighting.
In the past six months, the cost of recycled HDPE bottles, has fallen by almost half, according to our weekly Intelligence report.
