Another step towards sustainable packaging at Fonterra Stanhope
In another step towards ensuring its products are sustainably packaged, Fonterra Oceania’s Stanhope site in Northern Victoria has transitioned to a recycle-ready film for its 20kg cheese blocks.
Each year, Fonterra’s Stanhope site produces around 18,000 metric tonnes of 20kg cheese blocks, including cheddar and parmesan.
Packaging for these large blocks requires approximately 52 metric tonnes of plastic annually – which will now all be recycle-ready.
Fonterra's Brendon Watkins, Line Lead in the Cheese Division at Stanhope.
Large format cheese blocks are made at Fonterra’s Stanhope site by expert cheesemakers. From there, they are sent to Fonterra’s secondary cheese sites in Melbourne or directly to customers, where they are shred, cut or sliced into other cheese products destined for consumer fridges across Australia.
Jenny Phillips, Fonterra Oceania’s Sustainable Packaging Manager, said the move is part of a broader target by Fonterra to ensure all packaging will be recyclable, recycle-ready, reusable or compostable by 2025.
“A change to a resin within the plastic film means the material is now suitable for soft plastic recycling.
“We have industrial collection contracts in place to recycle soft plastic used at our secondary processing sites, and the remaining plastic which goes to customers will be recyclable when the infrastructure is in place to collect, sort and process it.
“Currently, 85% of our packaging sold in Australia is recyclable, and this project is one of 30 initiatives driving us toward our 2025 goal: to make all our packaging recyclable, reusable, or compostable.
Brendon Watkins, Fonterra’s Line Lead in the Cheese Division at Stanhope, explained that the steps to transition to sustainable packaging were thorough and the team were proud they were able to deliver the change.
“Testing of the new material confirmed that the key properties of the recycle-ready material were equivalent to the current material.
“We were confident we could transition to the new material without compromising food safety and quality” said Brendon.
With confidence in the material properties, trials were then conducted to test the machinability of the recycle-ready material on the production line.
“We wanted to make sure that everything was validated, including the sealing, suctioning, and unwinding of the material. Finally, we wanted to ensure that our line speed wouldn’t be compromised.
“This is a small step on a long road, towards our sustainable packaging targets, Brendon said.