Packaging with a twist: John West frees consumers from excess packaging
LIVERPOOL – 24th June 2024 – John West strips their best-selling tuna products from excess packaging, making it as easy as a twist to enjoy. The new John West ECOTWIST® multipack reduces waste and is fully recyclable. ECOTWIST® is available in Asda stores, with other major retailers to follow soon
ECOTWIST® is John West’s take on making their products easier than ever to enjoy and recycle. The market leader in tuna has eliminated excess packaging from its best-selling ranges – no shrink wrap, no cardboard – just an aluminium strip that keeps their can towers together and is fully recyclable together with the can.
Mark Doherty, Managing Director at John West Foods, said: “We have an ambition to be the most sustainable ambient fish brand in the UK by the end of 2025. “ECOTWIST® is the best packaging and product we have ever brought to our consumers. We have spent three years developing ECOTWIST® to reduce packaging waste in our consumers’ lives and to make our quality products taste and look even better. It’s the ultimate faff-free solution to busy lives – storing and opening the cans is so easy and thanks to no excess packaging, recycling has never been easier, saving our consumers time to enjoy our healthy and nutritious products.”
ECOTWIST® brings sustainability to the next level
John West has developed the patent-pending can tower, held together by the so-called SmartStrip®. The team redesigned the can, ensuring it holds the same amount of John West tuna but saving over 400 tonnes of steel annually.
The smaller, lighter designed can also reduces the amount of other contents in the product, the sunflower oil, spring water, or brine, saving an additional 1,500 tonnes of ingredients that consumers typically discard down the sink.
Chris Shearlock, European Sustainability Director for parent company Thai Union, said: “ECOTWIST® was designed to meet John West’s ambitious packaging sustainability targets. They avoid approximately 65 tonnes of plastic shrink wrap or around 300 tonnes of cardboard equivalent annually. John West’s SmartStrip® has been independently verified as fully recyclable, so consumers can recycle the cans in one piece through the UK kerbside recycling network.”
John West has the ambition to move all their products into sustainable packaging by the end of next year, with ECOTWIST® significantly advancing this goal. All John West ‘no drain’ ECOTWIST® products are already MSC-certified and the Company plans to have their entire ECOTWIST® range MSC-certified by the end of 2025. They have the ambition to have their entire tuna portfolio MSC-certified to become the most sustainable ambient seafood brand in the UK.
John West already offers the highest number of MSC-labelled products in the UK in the ambient tuna category, ahead of all other brands and the retailers’ own brands.
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About John West:
John West has a 160-year heritage in making tasty, high-quality food accessible to all. With its mission to help consumers ‘Eat Strong. Go Strong,’ John West is committed to offering sustainable seafood nutrition that helps to feed the natural strengths in everyone through its parent group’s SeaChange® 2030 sustainability strategy. John West is a Thai Union Group PCL company. The Group is the world’s seafood leader, bringing high quality, tasty and innovative seafood products to customers across the world for 47 years.
Today, Thai Union is regarded as one of the world’s leading seafood producers and is one of the largest producers of shelf-stable tuna products with annual sales exceeding THB 136.2 billion (US$ 3,912 billion) and a global workforce of more than 44,000 people who are dedicated to pioneering sustainable, innovative seafood products.
The Company’s global brand portfolio includes market-leading international brands such as Chicken of the Sea, John West, Petit Navire, Parmentier, Mareblu, King Oscar, Hawesta, and Rügen Fisch, Thai-leading brands SEALECT, Fisho, Qfresh, Monori, OMG Meat, Bellotta and Marvo, and ingredient and supplement brands UniQ®BONE, UniQ®DHA and ZEAvita.
With a commitment to “Healthy Living, Healthy Oceans,” Thai Union is proud to be a member of the United Nations Global Compact, a founding participating company of the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF), and current Chair of Seafood Business for Ocean Stewardship (SeaBOS).
Thai Union’s ongoing leadership in sustainability has been taken to the next level with the announcement of SeaChange® 2030, the Company’s expanded sustainability strategy with more ambitious goals for people and planet. Through SeaChange®, the Company was recognized and listed on the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices (DJSI) for the 10th consecutive year in 2023, ranked number one on the Seafood Stewardship Index (SSI) for the third consecutive time, listed in the S&P Global Sustainability Yearbook 2024, achieved a B rating from global environmental disclosure non-profit CDP, and was also named to the FTSE4Good Emerging Index for the eighth straight year in 2023. Find out more about the Group’s sustainability strategy at seachangesustainability.org