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Albany goes biodegradable

In South Africa, Tiger Brands has taken what it believes is a giant green leap by converting all its bread packaging to ‘degrade-to-water’ biodegradable film.

Pw 6793 Albany

It’s probably safe to assume that every leading consumer packaged foods manufacturer in South Africa is evaluating its options to act and look ‘greener’ when it comes to packaging. Trumping the market, though, is the biggest player, Tiger Brands, which has just completed a massive and complex project to convert it biggest brand by value, Albany bread, to biodegradable bags. The ground-breaking new packaging hit local supermarket shelves in early April. “This represents a notable and exciting development for Tiger Brands, and it is the realisation of our corporate commitment to sustainability and reducing our environmental footprint,” comments Meghan Draddy, packaging development manager cereals, milling & baking. “It’s a wonderful opportunity for Tiger to boost and add value to the Albany brand—and to give back something at the same time.”

Draddy stresses, too, that Tiger is absorbing the nominal extra cost as part of its social responsibility efforts. “We simply have to do our bit—and considering we use some 500 million bags a year, the amount of plastic our product is sending to landfill is enormous. We recognised that we have to take ownership of and solve this problem. Recycling such flimsy film is not viable from a collection aspect, and so converting to biodegradable packaging is the optimal answer.”

Albany has by far the biggest share of the country’s national bread market, with 12 major bread plants producing the Albany Superior, Olde Cape, D’light, and Everyday ranges. Not surprisingly, Albany bread is the Tiger group’s biggest user of packaging.

A pioneering project of this magnitude involved months of discussion, planning, development, and degradation trials, and it has taken more than a year since its mooting to become a reality. For Draddy and the Albany marketing team, the first box to tick was to determine whether, in fact, this move would be valued by consumers.

Tiger Brands has for many years used immersion market research techniques where subjects are minutely observed and interviewed in their work or home environments to explore the issues that surround and contribute to a brand’s performance.

“From this we ascertained that environmental issues are a concern for people across all socioeconomic groups—contrary to common perception, or misconception, they are by no means only in the mindset of affluent or highly-educated consumers,” Draddy notes. “With bread a universal staple in this country, we’re confident that this development will be warmly received by all consumers.”

The next stage of the project was to work with long-standing packaging partners to find the right biodegradable solution. After much research into the many varied technologies that are available, it was decided to link with Symphony Environmental (www.degradable.net), whose d2w or “degrade to water” additive that creates oxo-biodegradable plastic comes with a proven, globally-recognised track record (see sidebar on p. 64).

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