Heinz, one of the world’s best-loved food brands, is introducing innovative and more sustainable caps for its squeezy sauce bottles, made to be 100% recyclable.
Read: October 2022 Issue of Food InfoTech Magazine.
The unique new cap – made of an innovative single type of material – has been created after Heinz invested eight years of research and development involving more than 185,000 hours and investing US$1.2 million to find a suitable replacement cap for their convenient and extremely popular squeezy bottles, which sold one billion units globally in 2020.
The American food processing company created 45 different designs in total on the mission to create the new cap, which were printed in-house using a state-of-the-art 3D printer. After creating the prototypes, Heinz then followed a rigorous testing procedure to make sure the cap met the highest quality standards.
The first varieties to get the new cap will be the world’s most loved ketchup, Tomato Ketchup, and the popular BBQ Sauce. The cap will be rolled out globally from 2022, starting in Europe.
The move will mean a potential one billion plastic caps – enough to fill 35 Olympic swimming pools – can be recycled, instead of finding their way into landfill.
To date, Heinz sauce bottles have used a flexible valve, which had been designed to deliver the ideal portion of sauce per squeeze, but was typically challenging to recycle. The new innovative cap has been designed to provide the same perfect squeeze of your favourite Tomato Ketchup using a single, rigid and more recyclable material. Resulting in the cap – and Tomato Ketchup bottle – being easily and conveniently recycled alongside other household curbside recycling.
The new cap dispenses the same perfect amount of sauce every time without affecting the squeezability.
Jojo de Noronha, President of Kraft Heinz Northern Europe, said: “We’re excited to be announcing these first-to-market innovative new caps, meaning our consumers can now recycle every part of their squeezy bottle in their weekly curbside collection. A huge amount of work has gone into finding the right solution that means no compromise on using and enjoying our hugely popular squeezy bottles for the hundreds of millions who buy them. While we know we still have more to do, from a sustainability and environmental perspective this is positive news.”
Heinz is committed to reducing packaging waste wherever possible whilst continuing to offer great value, and this move is part of Heinz’s pledge to aim to make 100% of its packaging recyclable, reusable or compostable by 2025.