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Packaging

Unwrapping more responsible packaging

6 May 2024

Last updated 06/05/2024: At Whittaker’s, we believe best is always better. Our packaging might be world class in design, quality and food safety, but we need to do better for the environment. To put this in perspective though, 82.51% by volume of the packaging materials we use can be recycled and we have an extensive programme of work underway to tackle the rest.

There are two key problem areas in our current packaging:

Plastics: Long term, our goal is to reduce or replace plastic use in our packaging across our whole supply chain.

Currently, soft plastics recyclable materials are a solution for our plastic flow wraps in New Zealand. Plastic ‘flow wrap’ is used for our Slabs, Multipack Slabs, Chunks, Sharebags, Mini Slabs, and Artisan Squares unit wrap.

Unfortunately in Australia, the leading soft plastics recycling system ran into major problems in November 2022 and now many of our Australian Chocolate Lovers will not be able to soft plastics recycle our soft plastic packaging due to a lack of end-of-life solutions for the recovered soft plastics materials.

We initially thought compostable materials would be the best replacement for many of our existing plastic wraps and launched a customer trial locally in Porirua with our Peanut Slabs and wrapped our new Whittaker’s Cocoa Pods in compostable film. Sadly, we were unable to scale up our use of compostable materials due to a lack of support for national composting infrastructure.

Going forward, our packaging sustainability team is focussed on reducing our current use of plastics through:

Reducing the amount of plastic used within current packaging by unit weight. This can be done by removing layers of plastic and reducing the thickness of plastic we use. We have also got a program to reduce waste.

Replacing plastic packaging in our supply chain with better alternatives as they become available and are able to be validated. For example, we are currently looking at paper alternatives for some of our singles bars, but have not yet been able to validate a recyclable paper material to the point we’re able to launch it on the market.
Process improvements in Chocolate Making gained with new technology. We are currently outfitting our ‘Stage 8’ factory expansion in Porirua with cutting edge new chocolate wrapping machinery from Europe which is looking very promising during testing for running new types of packaging material.

Block foil: Our second problem area.

Our current block foil is a paper and foil laminate which is not able to be recycled. We have been working in partnership with our suppliers on researching, developing and testing new recyclable paper and aluminium foil solutions for our block foil.

We have got close to launching customer trials in paper block foil a number of times, only to have the New Zealand recycling advice for fibre based (paper) packaging change meaning we have to start over with new materials.

We know that the New Zealand recycling system is being reviewed at a national level to make improvements and provide guidance to businesses like us on where to focus our efforts in recyclable packaging for the future. This advice is not yet available to us in some sectors of packaging which has led to significant challenges for our research and development of new materials.

We’ve also run some promising factory trials in aluminium foil and we’re supporting our foil supplier, also a New Zealand based business, as they lobby for change enabling aluminium foil to be recycled in New Zealand using Whittaker’s as a test case.

While one option would be to replace our current paper and foil laminate wrap with soft plastic, we’re not prepared to settle for that. To us, something is not right if the only way we can deliver a ‘sustainable’ block foil in New Zealand is to wrap it in plastic. We firmly believe in and support the New Zealand Soft Plastic Recycling system as part of the solution to packaging recyclability in New Zealand. However, we don’t believe it can be the only solution.

Going forward, our packaging sustainability team are therefore taking a longer-term view of our sustainable packaging journey and working on:

Research and development in partnership with our suppliers of new recyclable paper and aluminium foil materials.
Supporting change to the recycling infrastructure in New Zealand to enable new solutions.

In the last five years, we have trialled 90 more sustainable packaging materials, running trials on over 115 Whittaker’s products in total. These include new compostable, paper, foil and soft plastic options.

We are frustrated about how slow this materials transition has been, but one thing we’ve learned is that due to the nature of this type of work, the materials and end of life options are constantly improving as new technologies become available.

We’re hopeful for what’s in the works right now at Whittaker’s, with our suppliers, and across the wider recycling industry in New Zealand. It’s unlikely we’ll ever ‘arrive’ as there will always be new improvements to discover, but this is a journey we’re passionate about, and one we’re proud to share with our Chocolate Lovers as we work on making good honest chocolate.