packaging

Our Australian Brand Sungold Works to Significantly Reduce its Plastic Use

As one of the world’s top dairy processors, being environmentally responsible means that we are constantly looking for ways to improve our environmental performance. As we continuously work towards this goal, one of the areas where we identified a clear opportunity for improvement is within the use of plastics in our product packaging.

Therefore, in 2016, we began the process of reducing our plastic use for our Sungold brand in Australia by updating the design of its milk containers. Our challenge at the time was to determine how to minimize the use of plastics in the construction, while still delivering the required strength and durability needed to delivery our products effectively to our consumers.

By redesigning our 3-litre Sungold milk product, we reduced the amount of plastics used to construct the bottle from 72 grams to 65 grams. We conducted numerous trials to ensure the new bottling would withstand the full product life cycle and at the beginning of 2018, the new 3-litre bottle went into circulation. Based on our annual production, this change represents the reduction of almost 6,000 kilograms of plastics – equal to the weight of three adult hippopotamuses - each year.

Building on this success, our aim is to incorporate similar design improvements to other product packaging. We are currently working to reduce the plastic use in our 2-litre Sungold milk product and anticipate being able to further reducing our plastic use by another 4,000 kilograms each year.