Heinz announced that it is continuing its mission to remove plastic from supermarket shelves with the UK roll-out of the Heinz Eco-Friendly Sleeve Multipack.

Made with WestRock’s PEFC-certified CarrierKote paperboard, the Heinz Eco-Friendly Sleeve is recyclable and comes from sustainably managed forests. 

The innovative wrap design uses no glue and 50 percent less material than a fully enclosed wraparound box and 10 percent less than a traditional paperboard sleeve design.

In addition to selecting renewable, responsibly sourced material and optimizing the design to minimise the footprint, Heinz is also advancing efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the manufacturing and transport of this new innovative sleeve is carbon neutral. 

The Heinz Eco-Friendly Sleeve 4-pack design has a nearly 20% (18.7%) lower CO₂ footprint compared with the equivalent shrink-wrap design.

Following a successful trial on Heinz to Home, the Heinz Eco-Friendly Sleeve will be available across the whole Heinz multipack canned range, including Heinz Beanz, Heinz Soups and Heinz Pasta varieties, in major retailers in the UK from September 2021.

Heinz’s innovative, recyclable packaging solution is an industry first for the food and drink world and part of a three-year, £25 million investment and installation at the Heinz Kitt Green factory near Wigan. 

It’s designed to provide convenience and value to shoppers, while offering a more sustainable solution to single-use plastic shrink-wrap packaging.

The robust and convenient to handle pack design enables people to carry multiple cans of Heinz Soups, Beanz and Pasta products. 

The design underwent rigorous consumer and pack performance testing to ensure it’s comfortable, secure and convenient for shoppers while also reducing the amount of material required to the absolute minimum.

Offering a more sustainable solution as well as improved shopper convenience, the Heinz Eco-Friendly Sleeve Multipack will be rolled out across all UK supermarkets, thereby removing 550 tonnes of shrink-wrap packaging.

Jojo de Noronha, Kraft Heinz Northern Europe President, said: “It is clear that convenience is important to shoppers – research has found that 59% of UK shoppers say that if a package is easy to carry or transport, it is impactful to their overall satisfaction with the product. 

“And sustainable packaging has a significant impact, too, with 71% of UK shoppers agreeing that they are more satisfied with a product if it is easily recycled or composted. 

“Grounded in shopper insight, we feel this new recyclable and easy-to-carry paperboard sleeve ticks both of those boxes and is the perfect eco-friendly solution for our multipacks.

“Our packaging innovation team continues to work hard to develop further sustainable solutions across our business as we make a £25 million investment over three years to implement the infrastructure needed to ensure this roll-out is a success, which will be a win for the environment as well as shoppers across the UK.”

Patrick Kivits, WestRock’s president of Consumer Packaging, said: “We’re extremely proud to leverage the world’s most comprehensive portfolio of sustainable paper and packaging products to create customised, consumer-centric solutions like Cluster-Wing.

“Our team worked in close collaboration with Heinz stakeholders to deliver a solution that would enable Heinz to achieve its sustainability goals and resonate in the UK market, while managing the cost and risk of this transition.”