As it celebrates flagship product Nutella’s 60th anniversary, parent company Ferrero touted in its newly released 2023 ESG report the progress it’s making on improving packaging sustainability. Key highlights include efforts to lightweight packaging and increase the use of PCR content.
Ferrero continually assesses its sustainability commitments, such as packaging recyclability, including for acquired companies that might be at a different point in their sustainability journey, the report says. The Tic Tac and Ferrero Rocher producer has made numerous acquisitions in the last 10 years, including the 2019 acquisition of Kellogg’s cookie, cone and pie crust businesses — including Keebler and Famous Amos cookies — and the 2018 acquisition of Nestlé US confections including Butterfinger, Baby Ruth and Raisinets. In May, it opened its first-ever chocolate factory in the U.S., in Illinois.
The report covers the 2023 fiscal year. It lists a 2025 goal that at least 90% of packaging will be “designed to be” recyclable, reusable or compostable. The company has achieved 90.7%, up from 88.5% in 2022.
However, that 90% target in the 2023 report showed up in the prior year’s report as a 100% target. The 2022 report cited the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s acknowledgment of signatories’ limited progress toward global commitment goals, saying, “most signatories of the Global Commitment for the New Plastics Economy are facing challenges and some of the key targets are not likely to be met by 2025. These challenges also apply to Ferrero as a signatory to the Global Commitment.” The 2022 report reiterated the company’s commitment to reaching the 100% goal, despite the challenges, and said that it also focused on design for recyclability and supporting the acceleration of recycling infrastructure development.
Regarding the percent of packaging that actually is recyclable, reusable or compostable — as opposed to just being “designed” for those practices — Ferrero reached 84.8% in 2023, up from 83.2% in 2022.
A key design feature to improve recyclability is the ongoing switch from multimaterial to monomaterial plastic films. Ferrero says 78% of the plastic films in its packaging portfolio are monomaterial, with changes occurring last fiscal year for several Kinder candy products.
Also by 2025, the confectioner aims to boost recycled content in plastic packaging to 12% by weight and reduce virgin plastic use by 10%. As of 2023, it had achieved 5.3% recycled content, up from 4.3% the previous year. It has reduced virgin plastic by 7% thus far.
In 2023, the parent company began converting the 24-piece gift box for its iconic Ferrero Rocher candies from polystyrene to polypropylene in Europe. It says the change improves recyclability while resulting in less virgin plastic use. This has resulted in approximately a 40% reduction in plastic use compared to the polystyrene box, and will avoid the use of more than 2,000 metric tons of plastic once global implementation is completed, according to the report. The company also invested in equipment to run the lightweighted packaging on its automated lines.
The percentage of packaging materials used in the fiscal year were: 40% paper and board, 35% glass, 16% rigid plastic, 6% flexible plastic, 1% metal and 1% “other.”
Ferrero laid out some sustainability work going forward, mentioning “the growing interest consumers have in sustainable packaging.” It is “now looking at how we will shape our packaging strategy beyond 2025 to 2030, and scouting for partners, technologies and materials that will help us continue to change,” according to the report.
The company foresees some challenges ahead, including for packaging recyclability and recycled content. Legislation and brands’ commitments to increasing recycled plastic content will “generate a huge market demand,” it predicted, prompting a “need for chemically recycled resins for food contact applications.” Ferrero will “continue to consider opportunities to develop and use new materials” as plastic alternatives while considering their entire life cycle, according to the report.
