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Our Grocery businesses continue to focus on making improvements in waste and packaging.
Blue Dragon's Original Sweet Chilli Sauce in a PET bottle incorporating 30% post-consumer recycled content
Across our Grocery businesses, circularity and resource efficiency initiatives aim to reduce waste, improve operational efficiency and support cost control.
In 2026, the Grocery businesses generated 97kt of waste, a 7% increase compared with the previous year. Of the total waste generated, 85% was recycled, recovered or sent for other beneficial use.
With a portfolio including staples such as bread, flour, rice, noodles, bagged sugars, tea, cooking sauces and breakfast cereals, reducing food waste is a major focus for Grocery Group businesses.
In the UK, they are signatories to the UK Food and Drink Pact, which targets a 50% per capita reduction in food waste by 2030 against a 2007 baseline. Each business has set internal food waste reduction targets and is implementing strategies under the Pact’s ‘Target, Measure, Act’ framework. For example, Jordans Cereals is working with Zest to use their AI technology to identify areas where further waste reduction can occur.
Between 2015 and 2025, food waste tonnage from Grocery Group business operations in the UK decreased by 36% due to ongoing improvements in manufacturing and a sharpened focus on food waste. By the end of calendar year 2025, 95% of food waste was sent to the animal feed sector, and a further 3% was used for energy generation as it was unsuitable for animal feed. Due to improved supply chain practices, there has been a reduction in surplus food shared directly to food banks, with 259 tonnes donated in calendar year 2025.
Twinings Ovaltine has continued to focus on improved operational efficiencies, implementing various initiatives to reduce waste at source. These initiatives include improving machine efficiencies, reusing production waste, returning plastic packaging materials back to suppliers after use and promoting a waste segregation culture across the business.
Twinings is progressing towards its Zero Waste to Landfill target. All manufacturing waste is recycled or recovered, with organic waste sent for industrial composting or used in animal feed. All packaging waste is recycled and the business is working towards a circular model for tertiary packaging, with pallets and plastic reels returned to suppliers for reuse. Its UK and Polish manufacturing sites achieved zero waste to landfill in 2025.
The majority of Ovaltine's waste is recovered or recycled for beneficial uses, including as animal feed, fertiliser and biogas production.
Tip Top is a signatory of the Australian Food Pact which aims to halve food waste in Australia by 2030. The business has developed a Food Waste Action Plan on reducing returns and food waste in its bakeries and customers' homes.
ACH continued to make investment in reducing waste by enhancing production efficiency and recycling waste materials.
| 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Waste Generated | 83 | 85 | 94 | 91 | 97 |
| Waste recycled | 84% | 82% | 86% | 86% | 85% |
| 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grocery | 158 | 142 | 142 | 149 | 148 |
Packaging has an important role to play in ensuring the safety and quality of products. Across many programmes and initiatives, the businesses are working to reduce packaging and increase recyclability and reusability.
In 2026, our Grocery businesses’ total packaging decreased by 1% compared to the previous year. Across the segment, businesses are working on changes in production mix and volumes, as well as projects within the businesses to replace plastic packaging with alternative materials such as cardboard.
Since 2018, the Grocery Group’s UK businesses have been signatory members of the UK Plastics Pact, led by WRAP, which concluded in 2026. The Pact committed signatories to eliminate problematic or unnecessary single-use packaging through redesign, innovation or alternative delivery models. The final report, due to be published in November 2026, will present the overall results and achievements of the Pact.
In calendar year 2025, 87% of packaging materials were either fully recyclable in the UK or recyclable where recycling facilities exist. Materials classified as difficult to recycle across branded foods account for less than 0.2% of all packaging and materials.
AB World Foods has continued its programme of implementing post-consumer recycled content in bottles across a range of Blue Dragon sauces, and has been developing and trialling recyclable materials for naan breads, stir fry, noodles and Paste Pots among others. The aim is to commercialise these materials once technically approved.
Silver Spoon has switched icing paper to recyclable alternatives, removing around 53t of non-recyclable fibre-based composite across the Silver Spoon brand. Caps used on Askeys and Silver Spoon brand products have been lightweighted, removing 7.4t of packaging annually.
The Grocery Group businesses in the UK have completed the Recyclability Assessment Methodology under the UK’s Extended Producer Responsibility throughout 2026. As a next step, they will look to redesign packaging where relevant into a higher tier of recyclability. As well as UK regulations, the Grocery Group businesses have been taking steps to prepare for the evolving EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (‘PPWR’).
Twinings Ovaltine is working to minimise its packaging materials, with the aim of increasing recycled content, eliminating single-use plastic and improving recyclability. It has also been taking steps to comply with and prepare for evolving and upcoming regulations, including the PPWR and EU Deforestation Regulation.
To help achieve this, Twinings takes environmental considerations into its new product development process, including design for recyclability guidelines. Twinings has removed plastic wrap from around 95% of its cartons and ensures all tea bags produced at its main manufacturing sites in the UK and Poland are made with plant-based, industrially compostable tea paper. Its string and tag bags produced in Swarzędz, Poland and Andover, UK, accounting for 86% of the bags it produces, are also third-party certified as home compostable. In terms of overall consumer packaging from these two manufacturing sites, 27% is currently compostable, 63% recyclable, 1% is designed for recycling and 9% is currently not recyclable.
In 2026, Twinings introduced Accessible QR codes across its UK and Ireland tea packs to support visually impaired consumers. Executed in partnership with the Royal National Institute of Blind People and its packaging technology partners, the changes are designed to make its products easier to navigate for blind and partially sighted consumers.
George Weston Foods is a signatory to the Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation (‘APCO’), a non-profit organisation established under Australian regulation to reduce packaging waste and improve recycling methods. While APCO is a key element of its plastics and packaging strategy, the business also addresses packaging challenges through an internal Packaging Working Group and by trialling new materials.
Tip Top, DON Smallgoods and Yumi’s have applied to join an industry-led soft plastics Extended Producer Responsibility (‘EPR’) recycling scheme that also has the backing of Australia’s two largest retailers. The Australian Government is currently reviewing options to mandate EPR Schemes including for soft plastics.
ACH continues to reduce packaging through initiatives focused on optimising pack sizes and reducing material use. During 2026, a plastic reduction project for Argo Baking Powder reduced plastic use by 3.85g per bottle, equivalent to approximately 7.7t of plastic annually.
