Cathedral City snack packs to move to recyclable trays

Cathedral City is moving its snack packs to a new recyclable tray, supporting Saputo Dairy UK’s commitment to reduce the impacts of its supply chain on the environment.

Made from widely recycled white PET, the new trays, have been rolled out across packs of Cathedral City ‘with Pickle’ and Cathedral City ‘Lunchpack’ from August 2021. Formed using a reduced gauge, the new trays will also use up to 33 per cent less plastic and contain up to 80 per cent recycled content.

The transition is the latest in a series of sustainability initiatives from Cathedral City, which in 2020, saw the brand partnering with recycling experts TerraCycle to launch the industry’s first recycling scheme for flexible film cheese packaging, supporting the entire cheese category. Now with 500 nationwide drop-off points, the scheme has collected over 290,000 units of cheese film packaging waste to date (equivalent to just over one tonne of plastic).

Earlier this year, Cathedral City had introduced up to 80 per cent recycled content into its trays. Cathedral City's Nibbles’ outer bags will be made of a mono-polyethylene laminate material and can be recycled with bags at large supermarkets.

Neil Stewart, Cathedral City marketing controller, said that it is the brand's ambition to make packaging to be 100 per cent recyclable by FY2022.

"Our research and development team is working incredibly hard to develop new packaging solutions which could be recycled in standard household recycling collections in the future, while providing the same quality, protection and safety as our existing packaging." Stewart said.

“We are making great progress towards this ambition and our new snack pack trays and Nibbles recyclable outer film, both launching this month, are a clear testament to our commitment. With a busy pipeline of sustainability initiatives planned over the balance of 2021, and into 2022, we can guarantee more news to follow from Cathedral City," he said.

Cathedral City remains the nation’s favourite and UK’s number one cheese brand, valued at £303 million.