New carbon friendly packaging for Young’s

Young’s has historically received fresh salmon from suppliers in polystyrene boxes – handling around 1 million such boxes each year. Now, in partnership with a new firm in Grimsby, the company is piloting a ‘green’ alternative - called Cool Blue Box. The Cool Blue Box is made from lightweight food grade polypropylene that can be sterilised at high temperature and so repeatedly re-used. It is cooled by a reservoir of food-safe gel in the lid which can be refrozen to at least -40°C. Because the method requires very little ice, there’s more room for more salmon in each box – which in turn means that up to 4 tonnes of extra fish can be transported in each 40ft lorry. Once emptied, the boxes are collected and returned to a local washing facility for sterilisation before re-use. Young’s manufacturing controller,

Tam Muldoon said: “Cool Blue has enormous environmental and quality benefits for us. “Plus, because the boxes are micro chipped and can be scanned, we get more detailed traceability information with less paperwork.”