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Final Project Report

GlassRite: Food, Ready to Drink and Soft Drinks

Glass lightweighting in the food and drink sectors provides an effective approach to minimising waste arisings from the food, Ready to Drink and soft drink industries.

Project code: RSI001035 Research date: August 2006 – March 2008 Date: June 2009

WRAP helps individuals, businesses and local authorities to reduce waste and recycle more, making better use of resources and helping to tackle climate change.

Written by: Mark Richmond, Project Manager, Faraday Packaging Partnership Alison Waterhouse, Network Manager, Faraday Packaging Partnership Walter Lewis, Managing Director, Faraday Packaging Partnership

Front cover photography: Clear Glass Containers WRAP and Faraday Packaging Partnership believe the content of this report to be correct as at the date of writing. However, factors such as prices, levels of recycled content and regulatory requirements are subject to change and users of the report should check with their suppliers to confirm the current situation. In addition, care should be taken in using any of the cost information provided as it is based upon numerous project-specific assumptions (such as scale, location, tender context, etc.). The report does not claim to be exhaustive, nor does it claim to cover all relevant products and specifications available on the market. While steps have been taken to ensure accuracy, WRAP cannot accept responsibility or be held liable to any person for any loss or damage arising out of or in connection with this information being inaccurate, incomplete or misleading. It is the responsibility of the potential user of a material or product to consult with the supplier or manufacturer and ascertain whether a particular product will satisfy their specific requirements. The listing or featuring of a particular product or company does not constitute an endorsement by WRAP and WRAP cannot guarantee the performance of individual products or materials. This material is copyrighted. It may be reproduced free of charge subject to the material being accurate and not used in a misleading context. The source of the material must be identified and the copyright status acknowledged. This material must not be used to endorse or used to suggest WRAP’s endorsement of a commercial product or service. For more detail, please refer to WRAP’s Terms & Conditions on its web site: www.wrap.org.uk

GlassRite: Food, Ready to Drink and Soft Drinks 1

Executive Summary Packaging reduction Optimising packaging design provides opportunities for reductions to be made in packaging materials. Environmental benefits arising from this include reductions in materials placed into the waste stream as well as a decrease in the energy and material consumption in manufacturing. In some cases, packaging reduction may also provide opportunities for cost reductions across the supply chain resulting from the use and handling of less material and the creation of less waste. Achieving a reduction in packaging materials and subsequent environmental impacts is one of main goals of WRAP’s (Waste & Resources Action Programme) retail innovation programme. This is exemplified by the Courtauld Commitment agreement between WRAP and major grocery organisations which has led to packaging waste growth being designed out by 2008, and absolute packaging reductions will be delivered by 2010. To assist in the delivery of the Courtauld Commitment and WRAP’s wider aims, WRAP has funded a number of projects that aim to realise packaging reductions across a range of materials. The suite of ‘GlassRite’ projects forms the basis for action on glass packaging with a specific focus on the food and beverage sectors. GlassRite lightweighting activities The WRAP funded ‘ContainerLite’ project piloted the approach of using the whole supply chain to demonstrate the ability to reduce container weights in food and beverage categories whilst not affecting market share. Subsequent work reviewing this project calculated that between 10% and 20% of material could typically be removed from the average glass container. Rolling this out across the food and beverage sector could potentially achieve glass savings of 100,000 tonnes per annum. Eager to capitalise on the success of the ContainerLite project, WRAP issued a call for tenders to exploit this potential in the category areas of wine, food and beer, under the banner of ‘GlassRite’. Faraday Packaging Partnership successfully tendered to manage a project which incorporated three category areas; Food, ‘Ready to Drink’ (RTD)1 and Soft Drinks. This project had the principal aim of promoting a comprehensive glass lightweighting programme on these products sold in the UK. As in the earlier ContainerLite project, close working with supply chain partners including food manufacturers, contract packers, retailers and glass manufacturers was essential to achieve the project aims. Key features of the project methodology included:

Identifying potential lightweighting opportunities.

Developing manufacturing trials to produce a wider range of lightweight glass containers.

Undertaking performance testing to ensure that lightweighted designs were fit for purpose.

Gaining a clearer understanding of the barriers, issues and concerns that companies might have over developing and using lighter weight glass containers, and to address these barriers and concerns where possible.

Investigating a range of consumer perceptions in relation to the lightweighting of glass containers.

Encouraging supply chains to adopt and use lighter weight glass containers.

Using this methodology, GlassRite: Food, RTD and Soft Drinks has initiated 25 lightweighting trials. This has included containers used for ten product categories including coffee, edible oils, spices, marinades, jam, mineral water, RTDs, soft drinks, table sauce and cooking sauce. Within these categories, the project has also included containers used for a diverse range of different price points with glass savings from trials ranging from 48 tonnes per annum through to annual savings of 3,500 tonnes.

1 RTDs are ready to drink alcoholic beverages

Key project findings Achievements The project achieved a direct weight saving of 21,415 tonnes of glass which exceeded the project target to achieve 20,000 tonnes of glass savings by March 2008. This has been achieved as a result of full production arising from the lightweighting trials supported by the project. The glass saving equates to a reduction in carbon dioxide equivalents CO2e of some 14,447 tonnes produced through manufacturing and transport. The trials have also established that glass lightweighting provides an effective means of minimising waste and additional environmental impacts. This is highlighted by the project attaining substantial tonnage from a relatively small sample of products (in the context of the wider UK food and beverage sector). The tonnage savings also demonstrates that food and beverage companies can achieve significant material savings by working in collaboration with supply chain partners. The diversity of containers included in trials has established that glass lightweighting can be undertaken on a variety of containers across different categories and at different price points. Some of the smaller products successfully lightweighted as part of the project demonstrate that tonnage savings are not solely confined to high volume products. Additional research To support the project methodology, two pieces of additional research were undertaken as part of GlassRite: Food, RTD and Soft Drinks to examine specific issues and barriers identified by the project. These are summarised below. Consumer perception Consumer perception research was undertaken by the University of Bangor which explored three specific issues relating to consumer interactions with lightweighted containers. This is given in Appendix 1. These were:

How does lightweighting affect consumers’ perceptions of value while shopping?

When given a choice between two containers, how does lightweighting affect consumers’ decisions?

How does lightweighting affect consumers’ perceptions of quality when they are explicitly evaluating the products?

The research tested these questions amongst a sample of 100 participants, representative of UK consumers. The results of the consumer perception research demonstrated that consumers’ perception of value is not affected by lightweighting containers by up to 15%. The research also found that any impacts of lightweighting are outweighed by other factors such as container shape, which appear to drive consumer choices. Generic Containers Research was also undertaken as part of the project to examine issues and barriers to lightweighting ‘generic’ containers which were identified by project partners as a potential barrier. This is given in a separate report available at www.wrap.org.uk/retail. A series of semi-structured interviews were undertaken with a representative sample of partners from the food supply chain. Potential barriers were discussed to establish their prevalence in each sector and the reasons as to the occurrence of barriers. Respondents were also asked to indicate any measures which could be implemented to facilitate the future lightweighting of generic containers. The findings from this research confirmed that barriers vary between different sectors of the supply chain. A key output from this work was the formulation of sector specific recommendations to assist in lightweighting generic containers.



Considerations The project identified a number of issues that may hinder lightweighting glass to its full potential. Where these issues have been present in trials, efforts have been made to overcome them. Some of the main issues have been addressed by this project. They include:

suitability of filling lines;

the lightweighting of generic containers;

financial costs;

consumer perception; and

UK manufacturing capability.

In addition to the issues that have been addressed by the project, a number of additional concerns could remain as barriers in future glass lightweighting activities. These include:

food market container proliferation;

production volumes;

branding and marketing;

alternative packaging materials;

leadership and initiation of lightweighting; and

confidentiality and publicity.

Recommendations The project has identified a number of recommendations that could be implemented by food and beverage supply chains to make further weight savings. These include:

Engaging all supply chain partners to form a joined up approach to lightweighting. This could assist in

reducing the occurrence of potential barriers.

Applying the various working methods and approaches demonstrated in this project to overcome barriers in

future lightweighting activities.

Taking advantage of opportunities such as mould renewal, which can overcome barriers such as cost.

Development of lightweight variants of existing generics by glass manufacturers.

Exploring innovative solutions to overcome potential barriers such as filling line compatibility. Such solutions

could be explored as part of future manufacturing trials.

Acknowledgements Faraday Packaging Partnership would like to acknowledge project partners and these organisations involved in the project: the project consortium, steering group members (as detailed in 3.1 below), British Glass and Glass Technology Services, the Department of Psychology, University of Bangor and Oakdene Hollins Consultants.

Contents 1.0 Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 6

1.1 Project Background ...............................................................................................................6 1.2 Background to Glass Lightweighting .......................................................................................7 1.3 Glass Recycling......................................................................................................................8 1.4 Project Aims and Objectives ...................................................................................................8 1.5 Project Targets......................................................................................................................9

2.0 Market Overview.................................................................................................................... 10 2.1 Food...................................................................................................................................10

2.1.1 Market Size.............................................................................................................10 2.1.2 Market Trends ........................................................................................................10 2.1.3 Key Players.............................................................................................................11 Retailers .............................................................................................................................11 Brand Owners and Food Manufacturers ................................................................................12

2.2 Ready to Drink ....................................................................................................................12 2.2.1 Market Size.............................................................................................................12 2.2.2 Market Trends ........................................................................................................13 2.2.3 Key Players.............................................................................................................13

2.3 Soft Drinks ..........................................................................................................................14 2.3.1 Market Size.............................................................................................................14 2.3.2 Market Trends ........................................................................................................14 2.3.3 Key Players.............................................................................................................14

2.4 Hot Beverages.....................................................................................................................15 2.4.1 Market Size.............................................................................................................15 2.4.2 Market Trends ........................................................................................................15 2.4.3 Key Players.............................................................................................................15

3.0 Project Structure.................................................................................................................... 16 3.1 Project Steering Group.........................................................................................................16 3.2 Project Management Structure .............................................................................................16 3.3 Project Funding Mechanism..................................................................................................17 3.4 Project Methodology ............................................................................................................17

3.4.1 Identification of opportunities ..................................................................................18 3.4.2 Recruitment............................................................................................................18 3.4.3 Trial Development...................................................................................................19 3.4.4 Trialling and Prototype Production ...........................................................................19 3.4.5 Performance Testing & Filling Trials .........................................................................19 3.4.6 Full production, Sign-off and Reporting ....................................................................20

3.5 Potential Barriers .................................................................................................................20 3.6 Project Timeline ..................................................................................................................21 3.7 Project Partners...................................................................................................................22

4.0 Summary of all Trials ............................................................................................................. 23 4.1 Spice Jar .............................................................................................................................25 4.2 Table Sauce ........................................................................................................................25 4.3 Cooking Stock .....................................................................................................................25 4.4 Uncle Ben’s .........................................................................................................................25 4.5 Mineral Water Bottles – AE Chapman....................................................................................26 4.6 Coca Cola (330ml) ...............................................................................................................26 4.7 Coca Cola (200ml) ...............................................................................................................26 4.8 Fanta..................................................................................................................................27 4.9 Sprite..................................................................................................................................27 4.10 Malvern Spring Water ..........................................................................................................27 4.11 Appletiser............................................................................................................................27 4.12 Asda Coffee ........................................................................................................................27 4.13 Generic Jam Jar...................................................................................................................28 4.14 Olive Oil ..............................................................................................................................28 4.15 Quinn Glass Trials (project details are confidential)................................................................28 4.16 Ardagh Glass Trials (project details are confidential) ..............................................................28



4.17 Performance against Project Targets.....................................................................................29 5.0 Consumer Perception Research ............................................................................................. 30

5.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................30 5.2 Method ...............................................................................................................................30

5.2.1 Materials Preparation ..............................................................................................30 5.2.2 Experimental design................................................................................................32

5.3 Results................................................................................................................................32 5.3.1 Shopping Task Results ............................................................................................32 5.3.2 Choice task.............................................................................................................33 5.3.3 Magnitude Estimation..............................................................................................33 5.3.4 Questionnaire Results..............................................................................................35

5.4 Findings..............................................................................................................................35 6.0 Generic Container Research................................................................................................... 36

6.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................36 6.2 Method ...............................................................................................................................36 6.3 Results................................................................................................................................36 6.4 Recommendations ...............................................................................................................37

6.4.1 Glass Manufacturers................................................................................................37 6.4.2 Contract Packers.....................................................................................................37 6.4.3 Retailers.................................................................................................................37 6.4.4 Transport and Logistics Organisations ......................................................................38

7.0 Conclusions ............................................................................................................................ 39 7.1 Achievements......................................................................................................................39 7.2 Barriers Addressed ..............................................................................................................39

7.2.1 Filling Line Suitability...............................................................................................39 7.2.2 Lightweighting Generic Containers ...........................................................................40 7.2.3 Financial Cost .........................................................................................................40 7.2.4 Consumer Perception ..............................................................................................40 7.2.5 UK Manufacturing Capability ....................................................................................40

7.3 Remaining Potential Barriers ................................................................................................41 7.3.1 Food Market Proliferation & Volume Issues...............................................................41 7.3.2 Branding and Marketing ..........................................................................................41 7.3.3 Initiating Lightweighting..........................................................................................41 7.3.4 Publicity and Confidentiality .....................................................................................41 7.3.5 Competition with Other Environmental Concerns.......................................................42

8.0 Recommendations.................................................................................................................. 43 8.1 Working in Partnership.........................................................................................................43 8.2 Glass Lightweighting Effectiveness........................................................................................43 8.3 Take Advantages of Opportunities ........................................................................................43 8.4 Developing Lightweight Generics ..........................................................................................43 8.5 Continuing the Project Momentum........................................................................................43 8.6 Explore Further Issues .........................................................................................................44

Appendix 1 The Impact of Light-Weighting Glass Containers on Consumers’ Assessments of Value – Project report


1.0 Introduction GlassRite: Food, RTD and Soft Drinks is one of a suite of three projects under the ‘GlassRite’ banner, the other projects address the wine and beer, cider and spirit sectors. These projects do not stand in isolation and are set in the context of a wider and longer term process and series of projects, all supporting the lightweighting ethos. 1.1 Project Background One of WRAP’s key objectives is to drive initiatives to reduce the amount of material used and landfilled, including glass. Consistent with this objective, in 2004, WRAP issued an invitation to tender seeking ideas for projects that could make significant reductions in the waste arisings from households. Faraday Packaging Partnership (FPP), British Glass, the glass manufacturers trade federation, and Glass Technology Services Ltd (GTS), recognised that the brand owners, retailers, packer-fillers and glass manufacturers (all already engaged in ongoing joint FPP, British Glass & GTS projects) would form the ideal supply chain to address this WRAP need. Perception studies carried out at Leeds University, suggested that weight differences between existing containers for nominally identical end uses were founded on brand perceptions of market needs, or glass manufacturing history effects rather than technical necessity or consumer desires. It was believed that this work, supplemented by further perception work and identification of ‘Best in Class’ (BiC)2 for a range of categories, could lead to significant reductions in typical glass container weights going to market in the UK. Through production and category data held by British Glass and GTS it was estimated that should the BiC philosophy be taken up across the board, it could result in a reduction in excess of 100,000 tonnes of glass entering the UK waste stream each year. This finding led to the development of a joint FPP / GTS project proposal that became the ‘ContainerLite’ project, running from March 2005 to March 2006. This project worked with the collective supply chain to demonstrate the ability to reduce container weights in all major glass container categories whilst not affecting market share; it was calculated that between 10 and 20% could typically be removed from the average article to align with the best in class and, in certain categories, a new ‘best in class’ could be developed. ContainerLite addressed products in the beer, spirits, soft drinks and food categories, with some significant successes. The most notable of these was the Coors’ Grolsch beer bottle which, by significantly changing its design, reduced weight by ~ 14% whilst maintaining market share and yielding significant operational benefits. Other successes included the first sub-300g 70cl spirits bottle, which combined to yield a total of over 8,000 tonnes of glass saved from the activities during the project. ContainerLite was hailed a considerable success as a demonstrator project and WRAP was keen to fully capitalise on this. In consequence a further call for tenders to address this potential was issued. This tender led to the inception of the GlassRite suite of projects:

GlassRite: Wine – managed by British Glass;

GlassRite: Food, RTDs and Soft Drinks – managed by Faraday Packaging Partnership; and

GlassRite: Beer, Cider and Spirits – managed by GTS.

The start dates for the three projects differed, with the GlassRite wine and GlassRite Food, RTD and Soft Drinks projects starting in August 2006, and GlassRite Beer, Cider and Spirits starting in January 2007; however, all projects shared a common end date of March 2008. In addition, and interrelated with the above projects, a further significant driver for lightweighting is the Courtauld Commitment, signed in 2005. Through this, WRAP instigated agreement with the major grocery retailers and brands to support WRAP in achieving the following objectives:

to design out packaging waste growth by 2008;

to deliver absolute reductions in packaging waste by 2010; and

to help reduce the amount of food the nation's householders throw away by 155,000 tonnes by 2010,

against a 2008 baseline.

2 Best in Class (BiC) is awarded to the product sample that has the least amount of packaging weight in a group of like packaging formats at a given declared product weight or volume. This is now called the UK Packaging Benchmark.


1.2 Background to Glass Lightweighting Glass has been melted, crafted and fashioned for many thousands of years and the reduction of container weights across time is closely linked with the introduction of new forming technologies. Initially hand-produced by skilled craftsman, production became mechanised around the turn of the 20th century allowing volume glass making, and moves toward high production speeds and high uniformity of product. Automated production began in earnest with the advent of the Owens rotary suction fed machine in 1912, which, through several refinements, survived until 1982 when the last machine was taken out of production3. This slow demise overlapped with the introduction, in 1927, of the Hartford Empire IS (Individual Section) Machine, which marked the start of current glass forming technologies. The ‘in line’ IS design, together with the then revolutionary gob feeder system, has, through developments over the years, led to current IS machines which are the ‘workhorse’ for glass container production. Control of container shape and weight has also been aided by advances in the control of raw materials, glass melting and homogeneity, forehearth temperature control and feeder design. The current generation of IS machines include many innovations which have contributed to successive improvements in production speeds container quality and lightweighting of designs. These developments include:

the introduction of air cooling and much later, ‘vertiflow’ cooling;

the introduction of the NNPB (Narrow Neck Press and Blow) process for bottles which has partially replaced

the ‘blow and blow’ process. This process allows lighter bottles to be produced due to improved and more

even glass distribution resulting from the use of a physical plunger in the blank mould rather than blown gas;

and,

electronically timed and servo-driven machines also provide improved machine control, which is essential for

the production of lightweight containers which have finer manufacturing tolerances.

Beyond machine engineering, the introduction of computer aided design (CAD) and computer aided manufacture (CAM) also supports the ability to design and manufacture lightweighted bottles and jars through enhanced design capabilities and machine control. Other non-technical factors have also affected bottle weights. In the UK over the last few decades there has been a continuing trend away from returnable containers to single trip containers. This trend is particularly relevant in respect of beer and soft drinks bottles. Returnable bottles necessarily needed to be heavier in weight in order to be fit for purpose to survive several trips through the supply chain. The environmental and business pros and cons of single trip versus returnable bottles is a considerable debate in its own right. However, suffice to say that the observable trend to single trip containers has led to a reduction in average container weights, although some legacy effects remain. The above discussion has largely addressed the technical capability to produce lightweight containers. However, the ethos of the GlassRite projects is to move toward the lightest technically and commercially viable container. It is recognised that containers need to be fit for purpose along a number of dimensions including:

aesthetic acceptability to consumers;

the ability of brands to retain brand distinctiveness and avoid excessive market risk;

technical fitness for purpose during:

transport from the glass manufacturer;

filling and packing;

transfer to the retailer by road and sea;

retailer display;

consumer consumption; and

financial viability for the supply chain, recognising the embedded costs of existing moulds, filling lines,

labellers etc. and also the revenue costs associated with such changes.

3 British Glass

Possible costs associated with lightweighting along the above dimensions must naturally be balanced against the benefits which might be accrued from lightweighting, which include reduced costs, improved filling line productivity, demonstrable responsiveness to retailer requirements, renewal of market image, environmental PR opportunities and alignment with company sustainability agendas. As a consequence, initiatives under the GlassRite projects have sought to produce containers ‘right’ for the market and business contexts in which they are set. 1.3 Glass Recycling

The GlassRite projects do not directly address the issue of glass recycling. However, lightweighting and recycling do interact, and therefore an outline understanding of glass recycling and the interactions with lightweighting is useful. Glass container recycling in the UK has been established for over 30 years. Operated through an extensive network of bottle banks, it provides good quality cullet for the glass container re-melt industry. In recent years, capacity has been aided through the development of local authority kerbside collection schemes, which have sought to contribute to the overall glass container re-melt recycling rates in the UK. In 2008 the UK recovered 65% of packaging placed on the market. The Government has set "business" targets which must be met by obligated companies each year to ensure that the UK meets its national targets as set under the EU Directive. The UK business targets are higher than the Directive targets because under the UK system smaller businesses are exempt from the obligations and so only a proportion of all packaging is obligated whereas the EU directive targets apply to all packaging waste. For glass, the business targets are 80% in 2009 and 81% in 2010. To tackle the remaining glass that is not currently recovered from the waste stream, the Government wants to both improve recycling rates and achieve a reduction of waste at source, and it is in this context that glass lightweighting plays an important role. 1.4 Project Aims and Objectives

The GlassRite: Food, RTD and Soft Drinks project had the principal aim of promoting a comprehensive glass lightweighting programme on food, RTD and soft drink glass containers sold in the UK. Accomplishing this aim provides an opportunity to reduce the amount of container glass placed onto the UK waste stream whilst also creating potential for a reduction in materials and energy consumed by the glass manufacturing industry. The broad project objectives were:

To work with supply chains within the food, RTD and soft drink sectors to identify potential lightweighting

opportunities and to advance through to manufacturing trials where appropriate.

To work with the glass manufacturing sector to produce a wider range of lightweight food, RTD and soft

drink containers.

To engage brand owners, contract packers and retailers and encourage them to adopt and use lighter weight

glass containers where available.

To work closely with supply chains and other key stakeholders to develop a clear understanding of the

barriers, issues and concerns that companies might have, over developing and using lighter weight glass

containers.

To investigate and address any barriers, issues or concerns identified in working with supply chains.

To investigate a range of consumer perceptions in relation to the lightweighting of food, soft drink and RTD

containers.

To capture information on glass container lightweighting achieved outside the influence of the direct project

activity and publicise success wherever possible to further increase the profile of glass lightweighting.

To disseminate project findings to key stakeholders and more widely to raise the profile of glass

lightweighting and its benefits, with the intention that other companies will adopt practices and techniques

identified by the project.


1.5 Project Targets The project target was to deliver weight savings totalling 20,000 tonnes per annum by March 2008. Savings contributing to this include ‘actual’ tonnes and ‘in delivery’ tonnes. The target measures the annual reduction in glass used in the manufacture of containers included in the project. An annualised target allows for a standardisation in measuring reductions over time, in addition to overcoming factors that could conceal actual savings such as production run length and projected increases or decreases in volumes produced. Measuring annual weight savings also allows for identification, aggregation and comparison of individual trials regardless of the point within the project at which full production commenced. ‘Actual’ tonnes are where the full production of a lightweighted container is achieved during the project period (August 2006 to March 2008). ‘In delivery’ tonnes are weight savings made where full production of a lightweight container will commence after March 2008. ‘In delivery’ tonnages have been reported under the target as these savings have arisen as a direct result of the project by receiving management time, funding, advice and additional support. Several trials included in the project are classed as ‘in delivery’ due to reasons such as residual mould life, production schedules, equipment modifications, re-branding and corporate initiatives which have led to full production dates beyond the project period. All ‘in delivery’ trials contributing to the target have been considered as low risk with project partners identifying timelines for introduction and confirmed production dates where possible.


2.0 Market Overview This section of the report provides background information on the food, RTD and soft drink sectors targeted by this GlassRite project including a description of markets and key trends along with leading brands and producers. Potential opportunities and barriers identified at the outset of the project are also described. 2.1 Food

In the context of this project, food relates to all foodstuffs and ingredients that are typically purchased through the UK retail sector.

2.1.1 Market Size Food is the largest retail sector in the UK with the National Office of Statistics and Mintel estimating retail sales of £110.2 billion for 2007 (Mintel; Food Retailing UK, 2007). This value encompasses all foods regardless of packaging type and is not necessarily representative of products targeted by this project. Product categories that are traditionally supplied in glass packaging have therefore been identified along with relative market values. These are listed in Table 1 below. Table 1 Market values of food sectors using glass packaging.

Sector Approximate Market Value (£million) * Ambient cooking sauce 485 Edible oils 276 Bottled sauces 236 Spices and seasoning 184 Pickles, chutneys and relishes 141 Jam 89 Honey 67 Marmalade 52 Vinegar 39 Dressings and mustard 27 Peanut butter 25

* All data sourced from Mintel Market Intelligence Retail Reports In addition to identifying specific category values, it is also worth noting the size of the retailer own-brand market. Mintel estimated the total value of this sector at £30 billion in 2006 (Food Retailing UK, 2007) which accounts for a significant share of market. Retailer own-brands are particularly strong in categories such as pickles, jams and to a lesser extent in high volume categories such as ambient cooking sauces, all of which are frequently supplied in glass. 2.1.2 Market Trends As with markets for most commodities, market size, brand share and product range are continually changing in response to both external drivers and internal competition. Examining market trends and forecasts in specific food categories allows for the identification of broader drivers and trends that cut across the wider food sector. One of the main trends to occur over the last five years has been an increase in the range and sales of premium products as consumer spending has increased. As a result of this spending confidence, consumers have been trading up from their regular price points on products such as edible oils where there has been an increase in sales of speciality oils (Mintel; Edible Oils, 2007). Sweet spreads including honey and jam have also witnessed increased sales particularly in specialist varieties (Mintel; Sweet Spreads, 2007). Another indicator of ‘premiumisation’ within the food market is the expansion of retailers own-brand ranges with lines such as Tesco ‘Finest’, Asda ‘Extra Special’ and Morrison’s ‘The Best’ now challenging for market share from leading brands. However, Mintel have forecast that retailer branded premium ranges could lose their appeal as accessibility to this price point increases. (Mintel; Own Label Food and Drink, 2006).


Increasing concerns relating to healthy living have also played an important part in shaping the food market. High profile media campaigns featuring celebrity chefs have highlighted a multitude of dietary related health issues including the effects of excessive fat, salt and sugar consumption. One impact of this has been a slight decline in the sales of pre-prepared foods such as cooking sauces and ready meals due to consumer perceptions that these products may contain high levels of these foods. This trend has been matched by an increase in the sales of ingredients, seasonings and spices as more consumers cook from scratch. This trend has been further bolstered by rising interest in home cookery fuelled by television programmes exploring ever diverse cuisines (Mintel; Seasonings, 2007). Demographic changes amongst consumer bases act as important drivers across different food markets by influencing purchasing habits. An example of demographics influencing markets is in the pickles, chutneys and relishes sector. The recent decline observed over the last five years has been attributed to a lack of appeal amongst an increasingly younger consumer base (Mintel; Pickles, Chutney and Relish, 2007). However, this decline has been matched by growth in other categories such as world foods that have become attractive to the younger consumer. Changes to consumer lifestyles have the potential to impact on the food market by influencing both the types of product purchased, and in many cases, the format of purchases. Phrases such as ‘time-poor, cash-rich’ have been used to describe the lifestyles of many modern professional consumers. The effect of changing lifestyles is apparent in categories such as traditional breakfast foods where products such as marmalade have seen decline in place of alternatives such a cereal bars (Mintel; Breakfast foods, 2002). Changing consumer lifestyles have also been demonstrated to affect markets internally. The increasing demand for convenience foods is an example of this with ready meals in plastic trays taking market share from pour-over cooking sauces. In addition to examining some of the broader market trends, it is also worth noting the growth of retailer own-brands. With an estimated launch of 2,690 products in 2006 (Mintel; Food Retailing, 2007), this creative market has grown steadily and is expected to reach a value of £36 billion by 2011 (Mintel; Food Retailing, 2007). This reflects a trend that consumers are prepared to move away from branded products within some categories such as edible oils where retailers have a market share of 65% (Mintel; Edible Oils, 2007) and jam where retailers account for 40% of all sales (Mintel; Sweet Spreads, 2007). Forecasts indicate that the growth observed in retailer own brand sales will continue as retailers focus on penetrating categories that are dominated by branded products. This will be further supported by retailers’ understanding of consumer spending habits obtained through loyalty schemes supported by store wide branding initiatives to increase the profile of retailer own brands (Mintel; Food Retailing, 2007). 2.1.3 Key Players Companies operating in the food market can be divided into two main groups; retailers and food manufacturers, who may be proprietors of branded products as well as suppliers of own-brand products. Retailers Retailers are an important group within the food and drink supply chain as their own-brand products accounts for a large proportion of container glass use. Tesco is the leading retailer in the UK with a market share of 30% of all food sales (Mintel; Food Retailing, 2007). Tesco operates 1,179 stores nationwide ranging from vast 24 hour supermarkets through to smaller convenience stores acquired through the take over of One-Stop. Tesco reported sales of £46.1 billion in 2007. J Sainsbury PLC employs around 148,000 people in 788 stores comprising of both supermarkets and conveniences stores acquired in the takeover of Jackson’s. Sainsbury’s is the second largest retailer with a market share of around 13% (Mintel; Food Retailing, 2007). In 2007, Sainsbury’s reported sales of £18.5 billion. Asda is the third largest grocery retailer in the UK with an 11% share of sales (Mintel; Food Retailing, 2007). Asda is owned by American giant Walmart and operates 335 stores across the UK. In 2007, Asda was named Multiple Environmental Retailer of the Year. Asda reported 2007 sales of £15.6 billion. Wm Morrison’s is the fourth largest food retailer in the UK following it’s 2004 takeover of Safeway. The company has a 9% share of the market with sales reported of £12.4 billion for 2007. Morrison’s operate 386 stores achieving full national coverage by 2007 (Mintel; Food Retailing, 2007).



Mintel estimates that around 60% of all food sales are accounted for by the top four retailers. The remaining share of the market is composed of four distinct sectors:

mid-sized retailers such as Somerfield and Co-op and Iceland;

retailers focusing on the premium end of the market such as Marks and Spencer’s, Waitrose and Booths;

food discounters such as Aldi, Lidl and Netto; and

local and convenience shops and markets.

Brand Owners and Food Manufacturers The UK food manufacturing sector is diverse; ranging from large, multi-national companies producing foods across a range of categories through to small local producers specialising in one product area. This section provides an overview of the main players in the food market who have a large volume of product packaged in glass, thus making them relevant to the project.

Premier Foods is the UK’s leading food manufacturer having ‘a broad portfolio of market leading brands and retailer branded products’4. Products produced by Premier that are relevant to the project include: preserves, cooking sauces, table sauces, vinegar and stocks. This includes high profile brands such as Crosse and Blackwell, Sharwoods, Loyd Grossman, Branston and Haywards, Robertson’s, Rose’s, Hartley’s, Frank Coopers, Sunpat, Gale’s, Sarson’s and Dufrais.

Greencore Group plc is a major international manufacturer and supplier of food ingredients and prepared foods. Manufacturing sites are located in Ireland, Great Britain, the Netherlands and Belgium. Greencore Group companies supply the majority of UK retailers in product categories such as cooking sauces, pickles and table sauces.

Princes are a key player in the UK food industry with products including canned fish, meat, fruit and vegetables, sandwich fillings, pasta, sauces, cooking and olive oils and microwavable ready meals. Brands within Princes’ portfolio of particular relevance to the project include Napolina oils along with various retailer branded oil products.

Unilever operates a number of manufacturing and distribution sites around the UK and has reported annual sales of around £1.9 billion. Well known brands produced by Unilever include Knorr, Hellman’s, Colman’s, Bertolli and Ragu.

Heinz is a global business that produces a range of food products, available in over 200 countries. Some of the main food brands produced for the UK market includes Heinz soups, Heinz tomato ketchup, HP sauce and Lea & Perrins.

Mars is an international corporation specialising in food and snack-foods. The two main brands supplied into the UK food sector are Uncle Ben’s and the market leading cooking sauce Dolmio. Mars manufactures its food products in the Netherlands and they are then imported into the UK.

In addition to the large organisations operating across different product categories, there are also a large number of companies that produce for specific sectors. This includes companies such as RH Amar (sauces), Wilkin and Son (jam), Duerr’s (jam), Schwartz (spices) and British Pepper and Spice (spices). 2.2 Ready to Drink

‘Ready to Drink’ (RTDs) is a term that relates to pre-mixed beverages that typically contain an alcoholic spirit combined with a fruit juice or carbonated base. Most RTDs are based on vodka, rum or schnapps and have an alcoholic content of around 5% by volume. RTDs gained popularity throughout the 1990s with brands such as Hooch primarily targeting drinkers in the 18 to 24 age group. Most RTDs are usually available in two sizes with a 275ml bottle, available through licensed premises and retail multi-packs, and a larger 70cl bottle usually available through retail only. 2.2.1 Market Size Around 240 million litres of RTDs are produced annually for consumption in the UK. This represents an approximate market value of £890 million for 2007 (Flavoured Alcoholic Beverages, 2007). Mintel estimates that around 71% of RTD sales are within the on-trade5 sector although exact splits vary by brand (Mintel; Flavoured Alcoholic Beverages, 2007). 4 www.premierfoods.co.uk

5 On-trade sector refers to products purchased and consumed on premises licensed to sell alcohol.

2.2.2 Market Trends RTD’s enjoyed rapid growth throughout the 1990s to achieve a market value in excess of £1 billion by 2000 (Mintel: Flavoured Alcoholic Beverages, 2007). This, however, was followed with a gradual decline between 2002 and 2006, with a further fall in the region of 17% estimated for 2007. Several reasons have been suggested to explain the decline in RTDs popularity including a heavy increase in the rate of tax applied to the category in 2002. This caused significant price increases which contributed to a decrease in sales. In addition to this, RTDs have had to compete with other sectors such as the prospering Irish cider market that has become fashionable over the last few years. Perceived links with underage and antisocial drinking have also created a poor industry image which may have further contributed to the decline of the market. The range of RTD products available has paralleled the growth and decline in the sector with a proliferation in products throughout the late 1990s and reductions since 2002, as producers have concentrated on promoting one main brand. The recent reduction in the number of products available is reflected by the fact that the top three brands in the sector account for 80% of the market share. The outlook for RTDs appears uncertain as the current decline appears set to continue. Mintel forecasts that the industry will respond with product innovation particularly at the premium end of the market (Mintel: Flavoured Alcoholic Beverages, 2007). This could lead to increasing diversity in the types of drinks available such as hybrid drinks based on beers, cream liqueurs and spirits other than those commonly used. Mintel also suggests that concentrating on premium products could assist the industry to move away from its current ‘alcopop’ image which could also buoy sales (Mintel: Flavoured Alcoholic Beverages, 2007). 2.2.3 Key Players Production of RTDs within the UK is confined to a small number of companies:

Bacardi-Martini are responsible for the Bacardi Breezer, a rum based RTD that is available in ten different flavours. The ‘Breezer’ had been the market leader up until 2002 when it was overtaken by Sminoff Ice and it has since been surpassed by WKD.

Beverage Brands’ main product in the RTD market is WKD. This vodka based RTD is currently the UK market leader. Despite the decline in the RTD market, WKD has performed well partly due to a high profile marketing campaign including a humorous television advertising campaign. Beverage Brands have recently launched Caledonian Cooler based on fruit, sparkling water and vodka in response to an increasingly health conscious consumer.

Spirits giant Diageo entered the RTD market with Smirnoff Ice in 1999 which overtook Bacardi Breezer to become market leader for a number of years. Despite being overtaken by WKD, the brand has continued to attract market share. Diageo also produces the schnapps based Archers Aqua which has recently been in decline (Mintel: Flavoured Alcoholic Beverages, 2007). Diageo has also announced the comeback of the ‘Mule’ brand which will be served over ice.

Liverpool based Halewood International have a portfolio that focuses on the off-trade sector. Products from Halewood include Red Square Reloaded and Caribbean Twist.

Vodka Kick is an RTD produced by Global Brands Ltd. Global Brands claim not to have been affected by the increase in tax applied in 2002 as the product is 4%ABV and did not fall under the legislation which applied to stronger RTDs (Flavoured Alcoholic Beverages, 2007).

A number of smaller companies also operate in the RTD market including Intercontinental Brands, Matthew Clark Brands and LWC Drinks.


2.3 Soft Drinks

Non-alcoholic soft drinks that fall within the remit of the project include:

bottled water;

carbonated beverages;

coffee;

fruit and herb juices; and

pressés.

2.3.1 Market Size It is estimated that in excess of 11 billion litres of soft drink are consumed in the UK each year. Over half of this production volume is accounted for by carbonated beverages such as cola and lemonade with juices and juice derived beverages also representing a large proportion. Market values for the main product types within the soft drinks sector have been provided in Table 2 below. Table 2 Market values of soft drink sectors.

Product type Product Examples Estimated UK Market Value (£ million) for

2007* Carbonated beverages Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Irn Bru,

Sprite, Fanta, Tango etc… 5,800

Juices and juice based beverages

J2O, Oasis, Tropicana, Capri-Sun

3,000

Bottled water Highland Spring, Malvern, Starthmore etc…

1,700

Premium soft drinks Amé, Schloer, Appletiser, Bottlegreen

83

*includes market value of all packaging formats 2.3.2 Market Trends The soft drinks sector as a whole has benefited from steady growth over the last five years and this is forecast to continue (Mintel, Soft Drinks, 2006). The driver of this growth has been, in part, drive by rising health concerns over excessive alcohol consumption. This has provided soft drinks with the opportunity to win customers over from other beverage sectors. In addition to this, increasing awareness of drink-driving and anti-social behaviour problems have also helped to buoy the soft drinks market (Mintel, Soft Drinks, 2006). Changes in consumers spending also demonstrate the growth of premium products in the soft drinks sector with an increase in the range of products as well as an increase in sales. This has benefited many of the smaller companies supplying high-end niche products such as adult cordials, pressés and fruit and herb juices. Consumer focus on health has assisted steady growth in the bottled water market in line with advice that adults should drink at least 1.5 litres per day. Mintel has estimated that sales of bottled waters could increase by up to 30% by 2012. In addition to growth in sales volumes, bottled water producers are expanding their ranges with an increasing number of flavoured waters available 2.3.3 Key Players The soft drinks sector is formed by a multitude of companies from large multi-national organisations with global brands through to cottage industries supplying regional products. Britvic plc is one of the major players in the UK soft drinks market with a portfolio of brands that spans various categories. This includes carbonated beverages such as Pepsi, Tango and 7Up as well as J20, Britvic 55 and Robinson’s in the juice sector. The company owns Pennine Spring water and a range of other smaller brands as well as producing own-branded products for retailers.



Coca Cola Enterprises (CCE) are responsible for the UK production of the Coca Cola range. In addition to these lines, CCE’s carbonates portfolio also includes Fanta, Sprite and Appletiser. CCE have stated that production across their portfolio equates to 240 million cases of soft drink every year6. The two main bottled water brands produced by Nestlé are Buxton and Vittel which account for 5% of the market (Mintel; Bottled water; 2007). Nestlé is also responsible for the Perrier range of sparking water. Danone is the leading supplier of bottled water to the UK market. The Volvic and Evian still water brands rank first and second respectively and have a combined market share of 30%. At the premium end of the soft drinks market are a number of smaller products focusing on fruit and herb juices (e.g. elderflower juice) pressés and flavoured sparkling waters. This includes companies such as Belvoir, Bottlegreen and Duchy Originals which have enjoyed growth as adult soft drinks have gained popularity (Mintel; Adult Soft Drinks, 2006). 2.4 Hot Beverages

Hot beverages include coffee, drinking chocolate and other malted beverages. 2.4.1 Market Size According to Mintel, the coffee sector within the UK has been valued at around £720 million for 2007. This is as a result of the estimated 70 million cups of coffee consumed daily. Of the different formats of coffee available, instant coffee represents around 81% of the market and is also the format of coffee that is most commonly found in glass packaging. 2.4.2 Market Trends In the coffee sector an increase in consumer demand for café quality products has seen the growth of a variety of products such as ground coffee and coffee beans. Mintel predicts that the effect of this growth will be a slight decline in the market share held by instant coffees (Mintel; Coffees, 2006). 2.4.3 Key Players It is estimated that 3,000 cups of Nescafe are drunk every second, which allows Nestlé to dominate the coffee market with a 52% share in sales across their product portfolio (Mintel; Coffees, 2007). This includes market leading Gold Blend and variants as well as speciality lines such as Blend 37 and Nespresso. Kraft is also a major player in the UK instant coffee market with its portfolio holding a market share of around 22% (Mintel; Coffees, 2007). Kraft is responsible for many well known brands including the Kenco range, Mellow Birds and Carte Noir. Fine Foods International is a leading producer of fair-trade beverages producing around 50% of the UK sector. The company also offers a range of products for retailer own-label brands across coffee, drinking chocolate and malt extract beverages.

6 www.cokecce.co.uk

3.0 Project Structure 3.1 Project Steering Group

Following the recruitment of project partners, a project steering group was established to provide industry input into the management of the project. The composition of the steering group was developed to be typical of food and beverage supply chains. Organisations recruited to the steering group provided input to represent the concerns of their sector of the supply chain. Table 3 details the composition of the project steering group. Table 3 Composition of GlassRite: Food, RTD and Soft drink steering group.

Organisation Role / Capacity Asda Retailer Ardagh Glass Ltd Glass Manufacturer Premier Foods Contract Packer and Brand Owner Faraday Packaging Partnership Project Managers British Glass Trade Confederation Glass Technology Services Specialist Glass Consultants WRAP Project Funder

The principal aim of the steering group was to ensure that the project was managed and completed in line with the needs and expectations of the industries to which it is focused. The steering group also provided an opportunity for representatives of the consortium to monitor progress towards the project targets. From the perspective of the project management, the steering group provided valuable input into areas such as the development of consumer perception research and research examining barriers to lightweighting generic containers. It is believed that obtaining the perspective of the steering group has strengthened many aspects of the project by providing industrial focus to the project. The project management team also used the steering group to develop dissemination plans for the project in an attempt to increase the uptake of findings from the research. The project management team would like to extend their thanks to the steering group members for their involvement and commitment to project. 3.2 Project Management Structure

The project was co-ordinated within WRAP by the Retail Innovation Team which has responsibility for engaging retailers, brand owners and their supply chains to reduce the amount of food and packaging waste that is placed onto the UK waste stream. The daily management of the project was undertaken by packaging research and development specialists; Faraday Packaging Partnership. With a membership base comprising of leading packaging and brand owners and a strong background in managing collaborative projects, Faraday Packaging Partnership were ideally placed to work closely with food and beverage supply chains to achieve project targets. Faraday Packaging Partnership appointed a project manager in December 2006 who was dedicated to oversee the GlassRite project along with input from other Faraday Packaging Partnership colleagues. The project has also received additional management input from British Glass and Glass Technology Services (GTS) particularly in relation to glass manufacture. As project managers of two other GlassRite projects (Beer, Cider and Spirits & Wine projects) GTS have also worked closely with Faraday Packaging Partnership to identify synergies between the three projects and to identify shared working practices where possible. Figure 1 below illustrates the relationships between the various project management organisations, along with principal and secondary routes of management for GlassRite: Food, RTD and Soft Drinks.


Figure 1 Principal and supporting project management activities within GlassRite: Food, RTD and Soft drink project.

3.3 Project Funding Mechanism

Project funding has been used by Faraday Packaging to address the aims and objectives of the project by initiating trials and commissioning supporting research as well as covering costs associated with the management of the project. Funding provided by WRAP has been made available to Faraday Packaging Partnership upon satisfactory completion of milestone reports detailing all project activity and providing an update on progress towards project targets. 3.4 Project Methodology

GlassRite: Food, RTD and Soft Drinks is made up of number of individual trials that contribute towards the success of the project overall. The involvement of different supply chains in these trials has resulted in minor variations to the methodology of the project due to differing circumstances and commercial priorities. Despite this, it is possible to recognise the key elements of the project method in each trial. These elements are identified in Figure 2, which also illustrates the flow of activity involved in each trial. A detailed description of the activities involved in each stage is provided below.


Figure 2 GlassRite: Food, RTD and Soft Drink’s methodology including the flow of activity associated with each trial.

3.4.1 Identification of opportunities Market intelligence reports containing information on the size, value and trends of various food, RTD and soft drink sectors were used to identify product categories to be targeted by the project. Several considerations were taken into account when selecting specific products such as ensuring a range of products from within the food, RTD and soft drink sectors. The project also aimed to include a variety of examples from different price points including premium, everyday and economy products. Sales volumes of products were also considered important to ensure that weight savings made to individual containers resulted in tonnage savings providing progress towards the project target. The profile of brands was also considered in this work with regards to maximising publicity and illustrating what major brands could achieve from trials undertaken as part of the project. After identifying potential categories for inclusion in the project, Best in Class information, comparing container weight against product volume, was used to identify potential margins for lightweighting specific products. This was a useful tool in the recruitment of project partners as it allowed for potential savings to be demonstrated to companies based upon existing containers currently in manufacture. 3.4.2 Recruitment Recruitment activities undertaken focused upon brand owners, food manufacturers, contract packers and retailers as it is these sectors that take decisions on product packaging. Recruitment of glass manufacturers was considered to be of less importance as all had participated in ContainerLite and had pledged support for GlassRite prior to the project commencing.


In excess of sixty companies in the brand owner, food manufacturer, contract packing and retail sectors were approached regarding involvement in the project which was complemented by additional recruitment efforts by consultants Oakdene Hollins. This activity involved using contacts from Faraday Packaging’s membership base as well as contacts made through WRAP’s Courtauld Commitment. Trade associations were also contacted in the early stages of recruitment to further promote opportunities for project involvement. Attendance at trade fairs and other industry events provided additional opportunities to raise further awareness of the project and gain additional support. PR materials distributed to various publications within the food manufacturing and packaging sectors also increased the exposure of the project. In the recruitment of project partners, potential benefits achieved through glass lightweighting were highlighted to illustrate the benefits of project participation. This included demonstrating environmental, financial and ancillary benefits using previous examples of lightweighting taken from the WRAP-funded ContainerLite project and other commissioned research. Project management activities also included expanding the project consortium and developing additional lightweighting trials etc. 3.4.3 Trial Development Following recruitment activities, Faraday Packaging worked with project partners to identify specific lightweighting opportunities that could be advanced to trial under the project. This involved close liaison with glass manufacturers to advise on potential savings as well as engaging other elements of the supply chain where necessary to identify potential barriers. This provided an opportunity to address any barriers identified. Opportunities identified were then taken forward to a trial planning phase where glass manufacturers produced conceptual drawings of lightweight containers. These were examined by project partners and were assessed for suitability against requirements such as filling line processes, labelling, handling and transport as well as marketing. Upon approval of designs, trial planning could then be undertaken in conjunction with glass manufacturers. Filling line modelling was also undertaken in the planning of some trials to allow for filling line requirements to be designed into the lightweighting process. Using technology such as Sensor Wireless “Agent QC”, which incorporates devices such as accelerometers, data can be obtained on impacts and collisions that occur as a container passes along a filling line. This information is relayed to a PDA unit in real time which allows the operator to observe specific locations where impacts occur. This work has been undertaken only in areas where glass manufacturers had requested specific support or had suggested that filling issues may present barriers to the project. 3.4.4 Trialling and Prototype Production The next key stage was for glass manufacturers to undertake a trial production run of lightweighted designs. This involved the production of a trial mould set, typically capable of producing around three hundred good samples. Sample containers were then provided to project partners for approval. In many of the trials this involved gaining approval from a range of interests within the supply chain such as technical, sales and marketing departments. In addition to this, the preparation of samples provided the supply chain with the ability to perform a range of tests necessary to confirm that lightweighted designs were fit for use prior to further production being undertaken. 3.4.5 Performance Testing & Filling Trials The testing of samples represented a critical stage in each trial in order to demonstrate that containers were fit for purpose after lightweighting. Testing focused on two specific areas:

1. Product performance testing was undertaken to assess the strength of a container in relation to the stresses and impacts that are incurred throughout filling, transportation and use. Performance testing typically consists of a series of experiments undertaken by glass manufacturers to identify the maximum impact and top load compression thresholds. Comparison with known impact levels then helps to determine if a container is fit for purpose. In addition to this work being undertaken by glass manufacturers the project also offered support to partners for additional independent testing to be undertaken by GTS.



2. Filling line trials were also a key element of the testing phase as compliance with filling line set-up is

critical to the success of implementing the final design. These trials were undertaken by filling, labelling and packing a run of containers produced from the trial mould. Additional testing was also undertaken by some partners where required. This included transit testing to ensure that breakages did not occur throughout the supply chain.

3.4.6 Full production, Sign-off and Reporting Following successful completion of trials, and agreement from all parties that all testing criteria had been met, a decision to proceed to full production was agreed by the product owners. Details of the trials and weight savings were then signed off by partners and captured for project and target reporting purposes. 3.5 Potential Barriers

Prior to the project commencing, a PESTLE (Political, Environmental, Social, Technological, Legal and Economic) analysis was undertaken to identify potential barriers inherent in the project methodology. Table 4 below provides an overview of potential barriers identified by this analysis. Table 4 Potential barriers identified in project methodology.

Factors Potential Barrier Political Loss of commitment from glass manufacturers

Environmental Move to PET and other materials in order to achieve weight reduction

Social Decline in glass use in comparison to other packaging materials

Consumers reject Lightweighting Concept

Technological Brand owners procure containers from European manufacturers who have more advanced manufacturing processes and so can produce lighter containers Technological capacity of UK manufacturers insufficient to support further light-weighting Agent QC shown to be incapable of supporting supply chain analysis

Legal Industrial partners prohibit inclusion of participation or results in reporting mechanisms

Economic Project budget insufficient to support activity Insufficient project management resources allocated Manufacturer goes out of business

3.6 Project Timeline GlassRite: Food, RTD and Soft Drinks commenced in August 2006 with completion of the Project period in March 2008. Figure 3 below illustrates the main phases of the project and shows the stages at which key activities took place. It should be noted that the project comprised a number of individual lightweighting trials and that timescales for these varied. Therefore, this representation is intended to provide an overview of key phases of activity throughout the project. Activities shown with ‘X’/brick red represent primary project activity with ‘O’/blue representing periods of lesser activity. Figure 3 Timeline of activity throughout the GlassRite: Food, RTD and Soft Drinks project.

Month Market Research Partner Recruitment Trial Development Trial Container Manufacture

Consumer Perception Research

Generic Container Research

Milestone 1 August 2006 X X September 2006 X X October 2006 X X Milestone 2 November 2006 X X December 2006 X X January 2007 X X X February 2007 X X Milestone 3 March 2007 O X X April 2007 O X X Milestone 4 May 2007 O X X June 2007 O X X X July 2007 O X X X X August 2007 X X X X Milestone 5 September 2007 O X X X October 2007 O X O November 2007 O O December 2007 O O Milestone 6 January 2008 O February 2008 O March 2008 O


3.7 Project Partners Table 5 below provides an overview of project partners involved in lightweighting trials and supporting research as part of the project. Table 5 Project partners involved in GlassRite: Food, RTD and Soft Drinks.

Project Involvement Organisation Core Management Team Faraday Packaging Partnership Consultants British Glass / GTS Funding Body WRAP Consumer Research University of Bangor

Allied Glass Containers Ardagh Glass Ltd

Beatson Clark Owens-Illinois (O-I)

Glass Manufacturing

Quinn Glass Tesco Asda

Retailers

Co-op Premier Foods

Mars Britvic Soft drinks

Food Manufacturers / Brand Owners

Coca Cola Enterprises It should be noted that in addition to the partners listed above, a number of companies have also been engaged in the project and have committed support although no actual trials have been undertaken with them.


4.0 Summary of all Trials Figure 4 provides an overview of trials and glass savings as a result of lightweighting activity under the GlassRite: Food, RTD and Soft Drinks. Specific details on the savings listed are provided in the subsequent sections. It should be noted that the detail relating to a number of the trials have been kept confidential at the request of project partners. Figure 4 Tonnages achieved from products lightweighted as part of GlassRite: Food, RTD and Soft Drinks.

Delivered tonnes Product On-trade7 Off-trade Total Production date Spice jar (various fill weights) 0 48 48 May 2007 Table Sauce (160ml) 0 90 90 April 2007 Cooking stock (360ml) 0 62 62 April 2007 Uncle Ben’s (500g) 0 525 525 September 2007 A E Chapman Mineral Water (250ml) 75 25 100 May 2007 A E Chapman Mineral Water (250ml) 75 25 100 May 2007 A E Chapman Mineral Water (330ml) 270 90 360 May 2007 A E Chapman Mineral Water (750ml) 563 187 750 May 2007 A E Chapman Mineral Water (750ml) 360 120 480 May 2007 Coca Cola (330ml) 3,587 0 3,587 September 2007 Fanta (330ml) 52 0 52 July 2007 Sprite (330ml) 30 0 42 April 2007 Appletiser (750ml) 0 566 711 March 2008 Asda Coffee (100g, 200g & 300g) 0 278.5 278.5 April 2007 Beverage Containers (confidential) 4,175 0 4,175 2007 Jam (454g) 0 117 117 December 2007

Sub-total: Delivered tonnes 11,447.5

7 Assumptions obtained from Mintel reports have been used where exact splits are unavailable.



Figure 4 (cont.) Tonnages achieved from products lightweighted as part of GlassRite: Food, RTD and Soft Drinks.

In-delivery tonnes Product On-trade Off-trade Sub-total Proposed delivery date Coca Cola (200ml) 1,250 0 1,250 May 2008 Malvern Spring (330ml) 100 0 100 May 2008 Malvern Spring (1000ml) 350 0 350 May 2008 Jam (454g) 0 1,050 1,050 May 2008 Quinn Products (confidential) 4,373 2,000 6,373 August & September 2008 Olive Oil (500ml) 0 462 378 July 2008 Beverage Container (confidential) 0 570 570 June 2008

Sub-total: Delivered tonnes 10,071 Total tonnes saved 21,548.5

4.1 Spice Jar

Rotherham-based glass manufacturer Beatson Clark has undertaken work to lightweight a jar used for a variety of herbs and spices. The original jar had a weight of 95 grams and was manufactured in flint glass. A re-design of the container resulted in a lightweight variant with a target weight of 87 grams. The weight saving was achieved through the re-design of the neck and base of the jar to reduce glass use. Detailing was omitted from the base of the lightweighted container, which also allowed for the gauge of the walls to be reduced. Beatson Clark reported that the savings made on the spice jar equate to an annual tonnage saving of 48 tonnes. Work to lightweight the spice jar commenced in January 2007 with re-design work and testing taking place throughout February 2007. A full production date for the first run of the lightweighted container was confirmed as May 2007. 4.2 Table Sauce

Beatson Clark have lightweighted a 160ml bottle that is used for a variety of table sauces. Manufactured in flint glass, the weight for this bottle was 190 grams. The lightweighted variant of the sauce bottle was created through re-profiling the shoulder and heel, which created additional product capacity. This allowed for the height of the bottle to be reduced. Improved glass distribution within the mould has also contributed to a unit weight reduction of 35 grams. The lightweighted design is 145 grams and will continue to be manufactured in flint glass. Beatson Clark has indicated an annual weight saving of 90 tonnes of glass per annum. Design work and testing were undertaken throughout the summer and autumn of 2006 with the first full production of the lightweighted container taking place from April 2007 onwards. 4.3 Cooking Stock

Beatson Clark have lightweighted a generic ‘stock’ bottle, which contains 350ml of product and is typically used for marinade type sauces. The original bottle had a weight of 259 grams and was manufactured in flint. A weight saving of 36 grams has been made through control of glass within the mould with a few other identifiable changes in the profile of the container. The original and lightweighted variants therefore appear identical upon visual examination. The lightweighted container is 223 grams and will continue to be manufactured in flint glass. Beatson Clark has reported an annual glass saving of 62 tonnes. Work to lightweight the sauce bottle commenced in July 2006 with redesign work and testing taking place throughout the autumn of 2006. A full production date for the first run of the lightweighted container was confirmed as April 2007 and the product is now on the market. 4.4 Uncle Ben’s

The Uncle Ben’s brand represents 10% of the non-pasta wet-ambient cooking sauce market covering a variety of cuisines including Indian and Chinese (Mintel; Cooking Sauces, 2004). The brand is owned by the Mars Group who produce Uncle Ben’s in the Netherlands and import it into the UK. Mars demonstrated interest in the GlassRite project in early 2007, with discussions leading to an examination of the 500g Uncle Ben’s container. This container had a cylindrical body with a profiled shoulder and heel which flowed out from the central labelling panel. The weight of this container was 258 grams, manufactured in flint glass. Lightweighting was undertaken by Ardagh Glass Ltd at their facility in Dongen in the Netherlands. This led to the production of a trial container at 243g providing a unit weight saving of 15 grams. This weight saving was made by slightly increasing the diameter of the label recess area, coupled with a reduction in the height of the jar to create a smoother design. Successful trialling work was undertaken throughout the spring of 2007 which led to a full production of the container at 243 grams in August 2007. The lightweighted container has been available in UK retail outlets since


September 2007 providing a glass saving of 450 tonnes per annum. Since introducing the lightweight container, Mars have reported in increase in sales which will increase the annual tonnage saving to 525 tonnes. 4.5 Mineral Water Bottles – AE Chapman

AE Chapman is a container merchant operating from Clapham, South London. In addition to supplying a range of generic containers to the market, Chapman also holds proprietary designs on a range of water bottles which are manufactured by Owens Illinois (O-I) at their Harlow site. Working closely with O-I, Chapman has undertaken work to lightweight five variants in this range. A key criterion of lightweighting this range was that key external dimensions (i.e. height, finish and bottle footprint) remained constant as the bottles are supplied for use on a variety of filling lines. The savings have been produced by controlling the flow of glass in the mould combined with a slight re-profiling of the shoulder of the container, in a way that would not affect filling and labelling operations. Details of weight reductions for the range are provided in Table 6 below. Table 6 Container weights for pre and post trial containers design by A E Chapman.

Volume Pre-Trial weight

Post Trial Weight

Glass Saving (Tonnes)

250ml 210g 190g 100 250ml 210g 190g 100 330ml 260g 220g 360 750ml 450g 400g 480 750ml 450g 402g 750

For the avoidance of doubt, the two containers included in the 750ml and 250ml varieties are different bottles at the same weight. Design work on the range was undertaken throughout November and December 2006 with full production commencing in the second quarter of 2007 with a total annual saving of 1,790 tonnes. Chapman has stated that the ranges of bottles are taken by a large range of companies bottling mineral water and other products such as cordials and traditional fruit juices. 4.6 Coca Cola (330ml)

Following discussions, which originated during the ContainerLite project, Coca Cola Enterprises (CCE) joined the GlassRite project consortium in September 2007. CCE wanted to develop a comprehensive programme of glass lightweighting. The first bottle to undergo lightweighting was the iconic Coca-Cola 330ml ‘contour’ bottle which is used on the Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola Light and Coca-Cola Zero ranges. Originally designed in 1916, the weight of the contour bottle prior to the current lightweighting was 263 grams, produced in flint glass. Working with the glass manufacturer Ardagh Glass Ltd, CCE used proprietary ‘Ultra’ software to reduce the weight of the bottle to 210 grams producing a 20% material saving. This was achieved through a 0.1mm increase in the width of the bottle that has allowed for a 13mm height reduction. The GlassRite project has provided further support to the lightweighting process through the provision of filling line modelling as requested by Ardagh Glass Ltd. This helped to identify areas for improvement on the filling line which facilitated a smooth transition to the lightweighted design. CCE have reported a glass saving of 3,587 tonnes per annum with full production of the new ‘Ultra’ container taking place at Ardagh’s Barnsley facility in September 2007. The move to full production was preceded by extensive testing work undertaken by Ardagh Glass Ltd throughout March and May 2007. 4.7 Coca Cola (200ml)

CCE are also working to lightweight the smaller 200ml version of the contour bottle. CCE have again worked with Ardagh Glass Ltd using ‘Ultra’ software (designed by the Coca-Cola Company in Atlanta) to reduce the weight of the 200ml bottle from 170 grams to 150 grams. At the time of writing CCE and Ardagh Glass Ltd had agreed on the design of the lightweight bottle which was trialled at Ardagh’s Barnsley facility in February 2008.


A plan to implement the lightweight bottle was finalised following this trial and produced since May 2007. Ardagh Glass has reported that production of the new lightweight container will provide an annual glass saving of 1,250 tonnes. 4.8 Fanta

CCE have also undertaken work to lightweight the 330ml Fanta bottle using the ‘Ultra’ software. The Fanta bottle had a weight of 250 grams, manufactured in flint glass. The new container design has seen minor modifications to the profile of the bottle allowing the unit weight to be reduced to 210 grams and therefore producing a glass saving of 26%. Design work on the new lightweight variant commenced in early 2007 with the first production trial taking place at Ardagh’s Doncaster facility in April 2007. CCE have reported annual glass savings of 52 tonnes with the first full production of the lightweight bottle taking place in July 2007. 4.9 Sprite

CCE has completed lightweighting on a third brand. The 330ml Sprite bottle is manufactured in green glass with an original weight of 220 grams. As with other CCE brands, ‘Ultra’ software was used in the redesign of the container which is produced by Ardagh Glass Ltd at their Knottingley facility. This has resulted in a 6% weight saving with a new weight of 206 grams. Design work to lightweight the Sprite bottle began in early 2007 with a production trial to sample the new design taking place in April 2007. Successful completion of this trial allowed for the first full production run to take place in July 2007 providing an overall reduction in glass use of 42 tonnes per annum. 4.10 Malvern Spring Water

Two sizes of the Malvern Spring water bottles have been nominated for lightweighting trials by CCE. The one litre and 330ml variants are expected to produce a combined glass weight saving of 450 tonnes per annum. The lightweighting trials saw a weight reduction in the 330ml bottle from 240 grams to 220 grams, whilst the one litre size was reduced by 70 grams down to a unit weight of 550 grams. Design work has been completed by CCE and Ardagh Glass Ltd with production trials taking place in February 2007. Ardagh has reported that these trials were successful and moved to full production in May 2008. 4.11 Appletiser

CCE are also working to lightweight the 750ml Appletiser bottle. The current weight for production of this bottle is 578 grams, manufactured in green glass. The project supported CCE to carry out filling line modelling to enable a better understanding of filling line conditions. This helped to inform the design process and also demonstrated to CCE that the filling line was capable of handling lightweighted glass. Design work on the Appletiser bottle commenced in November 2007 leading to a production run of lightweighted samples in January 2008. Ardagh Glass Ltd has confirmed a weight of 420 grams for the new bottle which commenced full production in March 2008. 4.12 Asda Coffee

Asda have achieved a weight saving across their range of own brand coffee jars through adopting lighter weight containers. The change has been made to three product sizes on lines including ‘Gold Roast’, ‘Rich Roast’ and decaffeinated varieties. Table 7 below provides an overview of the weight changes. Table 7 Asda coffee jar weight before and after lightweighting.

Size Previous weight New Weight 100g 219 199 200g 412 370 300g 566 501


Asda has reported total annual glass savings of 278.5 tonnes per annum with the new containers which were introduced in the second quarter of 2007. The jars are manufactured in flint glass and are produced by Ardagh Glass Ltd at Dongen in the Netherlands. 4.13 Generic Jam Jar

Premier Foods have been involved with this GlassRite project since January 2006. Premier Foods has nominated several containers for lightweighting including a 454g (1lb) standard jam jar that is used to supply retailer own-brand jams and marmalades. Re-design work was undertaken by Ardagh Glass Ltd throughout 2007 to reduce the weight of the container from its original weight of 203 grams. This has resulted in a lightweight design at 190 grams providing a 6.4% weight saving. Trial production of this jar was undertaken by Ardagh Glass Ltd in July and November of 2007 which proved successful from a glass manufacturing perspective. Samples obtained from the trial were provided to Premier Foods for approval and filling line trials. Ardagh Glass Ltd has indicated that full production of the lightweight design will commence in May 2008 and will provide an annual glass saving of 1,050 tonnes. Ardagh Glass Ltd has also made an additional 117 tonne glass saving as part of work to lightweight Premier Food’s generic jam jar. The container was run for a period of two weeks in December 2007 at the Worksop facility at a weight of 196 grams. This saving has been recorded separately from the expected annual saving resulting from the trial as this is a one-off material saving. 4.14 Olive Oil

Allied Glass Containers, the Leeds-based glass packaging specialist, has successfully undertaken work to lightweight a 500ml square oil bottle. The bottle, which had an original glass weight of 422 grams, is used for a variety of retailer own-brand olive oils and also for some speciality products, such as nut derived oils. To achieve the weight reduction, Allied Glass undertook initial design work, which identified a substantial potential reduction in glass weight of 42 grams. Using the latest 3D design technology, specification drawings were completed of the bottle and an acrylic model of the design produced for approval by the customer. As part of this work, it was established that adoption of the design would require significant investment in changing parts of the filling line and as a result this design was rendered obsolete. Therefore, a second design was produced by Allied Glass, which also targeted a weight reduction of 42 grams, whilst being aware of filling line tolerances. Once again, an acrylic model was produced for customer approvals, which led to a trial production run being undertaken in February 2008. Due to the success of this trial, full production of the lightweight container, which weighs 380 grams, commenced in July 2008, producing an annual glass saving of 378 tonnes. 4.15 Quinn Glass Trials (project details are confidential)

Quinn Glass has undertaken work to lightweight three beverage bottles. Quinn has reported a glass saving of 6,373 tonnes arising from this lightweighting activity. 4.16 Ardagh Glass Trials (project details are confidential)

Ardagh Glass Ltd has made a glass saving of 4,745 tonnes on four beverage and food containers.



4.17 Performance against Project Targets Table 8 provides an overview of the tonnages achieved from the lightweighting trials detailed above in relation to the project targets. Table 8 Comparison of project targets against tonnages achieved.

Target Tonnage Tonnage Achieved / Identified8

CO² Saving (tonnes)

Target 20,000 21,415.5 14,447 Total Glass Savings 21,415.5

As illustrated above, the total glass savings achieved during the project period is 21,415.5 tonnes, which exceeds the project target of 20,000 tonnes. This demonstrates that glass lightweighting provides an effective means to reduce material placed onto the market. In addition to reporting this material saving it is also estimated that the project has resulted in reducing carbon dioxide emissions in the manufacturing processes by 14,447 tonnes.

8 Includes both actual and in delivery tonnages as detailed in section 1.4 above.

5.0 Consumer Perception Research As noted in the Executive Summary, to support the project methodology, two pieces of additional research were undertaken as part of GlassRite: Food, RTD and Soft Drinks to examine specific issues and barriers identified by the project. These are summarised below and within this report, with the full reports available at www.wrap.org.uk/retail. The first piece of research examined consumer perceptions of lightweighted products in the food, RTD and soft drink sectors. The work was undertaken by the Centre for Experimental Consumer Psychology in the School of Psychology at Bangor University. 5.1 Introduction

The purpose of the research was to support the GlassRite: Food, RTD and Soft Drink project by providing insights into how glass lightweighting and container design affects consumers’ perception of products. Three key issues related to lightweighting were identified and examined through the research. These issues formed the basis of the research questions:

How does lightweighting affect consumers’ perceptions of value while shopping?

When given a choice between two bottles, how does lightweighting affect consumers’ decisions?

How does lightweighting affect consumers’ perceptions of quality when they are explicitly evaluating the

products?

An important area for exploration was container shape, as products of the same category are frequently placed in containers of different shapes. An important part of the experimental design was to determine whether product shape or product weight was the significant driver of consumer perception. To analyse the effects of these two factors, participants were presented with products varying in both shape and weight, they were not told that product weight was the variable being studied. The output from the research aimed to provide brand owners, retailers, designers, marketeers and glass manufacturers with further information to guide their decisions regarding the lightweighting of their own glass containers. 5.2 Method

One hundred participants were recruited to take part in the research. Participants were paid £14 for their time. Participants were selected to represent a cross section of the UK population, aiming to reflect a sample of consumers buying products targeted by the GlassRite: Food, RTD and Soft Drink project. 5.2.1 Materials Preparation Products from four different categories were used in the study:

ready to drink (70 cl);

coffee (100 g);

jam (approx. 330 g); and

cook-in sauce (approx. 475 g).

To overcome pre-existing attitudes towards particular brands, all products used in the experiments were disguised and given a uniform appearance. Labels were removed and lids were spray-painted black. In the case of RTDs, bottles were spray-painted silver. Labels were replaced with generic black and white labels depicting only the product identification number (numbers 1 to 9, referred to as the brand number). The contents were all replaced with a generic equivalent so that participants did not use the perceived quality of the contents to guide their decisions. Participants were informed that the contents had been replaced and that they should not use this to guide any of their decisions. Figure 5 shows examples of each product prepared for use in the experiment.


http://www.wrap.org.uk/retail

Figure 5 Examples of the four product categories after being disguised.

Three containers were prepared for each of the categories by varying the contents to replicate lightweighting. However, coffee jars were artificially heavy weighted due to low product weight of instant coffee jars. This was undertaken by fixing coins to the underside of the container lid. The weight of the variants was: original weight;

light (filled to be 15% lighter than the original empty container); and

super-light (filled to be 30% lighter than the original empty container).

This lightweighting was achieved by filling the containers so that they held a reduced amount of product. For example, the container of Jam 1 weighed 177g. If this container were to be lightweighted by 15% it would weigh 150g, a reduction of 27g. When re-filling the container with the generic jam, 27g less jam was put in the light container than the original container with the remainder of the void filled with Styrofoam. Weightings were accurate to plus or minus 1g of the actual weight. Figure 6 below illustrates the process of artificially lightweighting a jam product. Figure 6 The artificial lightweighting of a jam container.


5.2.2 Experimental design Participants completed five tasks as part of the research, which are described below.

1. A short questionnaire was completed at the start of the experiment to collect demographic and shopping habit information.

2. A shopping task was undertaken which required participants to select products from mock supermarket

shelves and place each selected product into a shopping basket. Participants were also asked to guess the price of each product. Each shelf contained only one product category. Three of these were original weight items, three were lightweight items, and three were super-lightweight items which were counterbalanced across all participants to ensure all containers were exposed to participants. Data was analysed by weight and shape to determine if any weight or shape received higher price guesses and could therefore be used as an indication of which features participants used when making their value judgments.

Participants were also videotaped whilst performing this task. After the experiment, an expert independent observer ‘blind’ to the weight classification of each product viewed all the videotapes and analysed the participants’ actions, gestures and facial expressions. From this, the observer judged which of the products belonged to each weight category. The observer placed each item on a scale of 1 to 5 of how likely it was to belong to either the original, light or super-light groups. This work attempted to identify behaviours associated with the handling of glass packaged products at different weights.

3. The third phase of the experiment involved a choice task, where a participant and a researcher sat on

either side of a screen through which pairs of containers were passed. Participants were required to choose their favourite from a pair of containers by indication “left” or “right”. Participants were given no instruction as to what their decisions should be based on: they were simply asked to pick their favourite. Container pairings were critical in this experiment. Participants only ever received two items of the same product category together so that choices were only made between two coffees for example, not a coffee and a jam. The shape of the two containers was never from the same weight category. From this experiment, the research team were able to analyse whether the influencing factor in choosing a favourite container was weight or shape.

4. A quality estimation task formed the fourth phase of the research where participants made relative

quality judgements about each bottle of a specific category. Participants were presented with one container at a time. First, they received a “standard” container that they were told had a “quality value” of 100. Participants were given a short time to examine this container. The standard container was then taken away from the participant and replaced with a light or super-lightweight container. The participants had to compare this container to the standard container by giving it a value. Participants were only exposed to one product with 25% of participants making magnitude estimations for RTDs, 25% for coffees, 25% for jam and 25% for sauces. Participants were assigned to a group based on the outcome of their answers to the short questionnaire at the start of the experiment.

5. An exit questionnaire to collect information regarding recycling habits, packaging preferences, and

opinions on lightweighting information labelling on products was completed. 5.3 Results

The results from the research can be divided up into four categories relating to different phases of the experiment. 5.3.1 Shopping Task Results The price guesses resulting from the shopping task were first collated across product category and shape, to determine the overall results for the effect of lightweighting on participants’ price estimations. A non-statistical difference was found in value ratings (price estimates) between the original and lightweight categories. This indicates that lightweighting a container by up to 15% does not appear to change consumer perceptions of value. However, combining original and light estimates and comparing them to the super-lightweight price estimates reveals that participants’ value judgments can be negatively affected by lightweighting products by 30%. Participants judged the super-lightweight products to be worth approximately 3 pence less than original or lightweight products. This is approximately a 1.7% reduction in perceived price.


Price estimations by product weight were then collated to examine the effect of shape within each product category. Interestingly, container shape had a large influence on the value estimations as shown in Figure 7. Figure 7 Price estimations by shape category, per product category.

Original Light Superlight

RTD

An expert observer viewed the video of each participant ‘shopping’ for each product and was able to correctly categorise the heaviest and lightest weight category products significantly better than chance guessing. The observer was partially able to spot the handling of super-lightweight products, performing about 2% better than chance. This result demonstrated changes in participants’ behaviour to an observable degree when handling products belonging to different weight categories. 5.3.2 Choice task Product preferences were analysed by weight category. The product in the heavier weight category was chosen more often than the product in the lighter weight category of the pair. Further analysis of the data was undertaken examining differences across different product categories. Categories were found to behave in different ways, which seemed to contradict the findings from the weight category analysis and it therefore appeared that container shape has an influence. Data was then examined by shape type per product category. This found differences amongst different shapes in the four categories. Compared to the effects of container weight, the effects of container shape were very large, in the order of 20% to 50%. In summary, participants were more likely to prefer the product belonging to a heavier weight category. While these effects were statistical, they were very small. These effects were dwarfed by the effects of container shape on container preference. It therefore appears that the actual weight effect was being driven by shape preferences. 5.3.3 Magnitude Estimation When explicitly asked to assess product quality in a magnitude estimation task, the weight category of the product made no difference to the magnitude estimation provided by participants. No differences were found between any of the weight categories for any of the product categories as illustrated in Figure 8 below.


Figure 8 Magnitude estimations by weight category.

Assessing the influence of weight and analysing the data against container shape identified larger differences in the estimation of quality. This is illustrated in Figure 9 below. Figure 9 Magnitude estimations by container shape.

Original

Light

Superlight

In summary, the results from this experiment show that when asked explicitly about quality judgements, container shape appears to be the driving factor behind consumer choice. No effect of weight was established in any of the product categories.


5.3.4 Questionnaire Results The questionnaires undertaken by participants to provide additional demographic and shopping habit information also provided some interesting results. In summary, these are:

96% of respondents involved in the research claimed to regularly recycle;

67% of respondents identified glass as their preferred packaging material. This varied across different

product categories; and

Only 6% of participants responded that knowing of glass lightweighting would put them off buying a

product. Fifty-two per cent said they would positively purchase a product if it was lightweighted while 42%

stated that such information would not influence their purchasing decisions.

5.4 Findings The results of the research have contributed to five key findings:

1. Lightweighting by up to 15% does not affect consumer perception of value, although lightweighting by up to 30% may have some effects.

2. When given a choice between two containers of different weights, consumers are more likely to prefer

the product of the same weight or close to the original weight than a product that has been lightweighted. However, container shape appears to be the main driver of preference.

3. Lightweighting has no effect on relative quality estimates. However quality estimates increased with

product weight for RTDs, coffees and jams. For cook-in sauces, the opposite held; the lighter the actual product, the greater their perceived value.

4. Container shape appears to be the main driver of consumer perception and any effect of lightweighting

is small and likely to be outweighed by other supermarket “noise”.

5. Communicating to consumers that a product has been lightweighted may be helpful and is unlikely to hinder consumer purchase.


6.0 Generic Container Research The other piece of supporting research examined issues associated with the lightweighting of generic containers and was undertaken by Faraday Packaging Partnership. The full report is available at: www.wrap.org.uk/retail. 6.1 Introduction

The term ‘generic’ or ‘standard’ glass container refers to a single container design which may be produced by several different glass manufacturers for a range of food and beverage applications. Generic containers represent an off-the-shelf solution for glass packaging as these containers are offered to the market directly from the glass manufacturers as well as through container merchants. Generic containers represent a large proportion of the total glass packaging used in the UK, particularly on retailer own-brands in categories such as jams, pickles and pour-over cooking sauces. In undertaking GlassRite Food, RTD and Soft Drinks, the project team encountered difficulties including generic containers in lightweighting trials due to a variety of barriers raised by the industry. These ranged from brand confidence through to costs and technical issues in glass manufacture and product filling processes. Dialogue with project partners indicated that these concerns and barriers appear to differ throughout the various elements of the supply chain, with certain issues being more prevalent in some sectors than others. It was therefore clear that a better understanding of the barriers facing the food and beverage sector was required in developing and adopting lightweight generic containers. Additional research was therefore proposed to investigate the issues further. The objectives of the work were to:

Identify and establish barriers and problems that prevent the lightweighting of generic glass containers.

Identify potential solutions to the barriers identified in the research.

Provide recommendations for individual sectors of the food supply chain as to what can be done to

encourage lightweighting of generic containers in future.

6.2 Method Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with a sample of representatives from the main sectors of the supply chain that use generic containers. This included retailers, contract packers and glass manufacturers. British Glass also provided assistance. Interviews focused around nine key issues listed below. Data were then extracted from the responses and grouped according to the key issues. In addition to gathering qualitative data on the themes identified, the questionnaire also asked participants to provide a magnitude estimation on how prevalent they believed a problem to be within their sector. This data was secondary to establishing the causes of barriers and was intended to be indicative of the extent of barriers considered. 6.3 Results

Potential barriers to lightweighting generic containers within the food and soft drink sectors were examined, including:

brand image;

container shape;

brand owner confidence;

manufacturing capabilities, processes and infrastructure;

margins for additional lightweighting;

financial cost;

transport and logistics;

filling line and process compatibility; and

market demands for lightweighted containers.

The results indicated that the prevalence of these barriers is not uniform across the different sectors. For most of the issues examined, there appeared to be a clear divide between issues perceived to be barriers by glass manufacturers and those perceived by retailers and packer fillers. An example of this relates to margins for



additional lightweighting and manufacturing processes, capabilities and infrastructure where retailers and packer fillers reported no barrier whilst the glass manufacturers reported a high barrier. 6.4 Recommendations

A key element in identifying and qualifying potential barriers was to develop recommendations to facilitate the lightweighting of generic containers in the future. The recommendations are divided into specific actions that could be adopted by different sectors of the supply chain and are summarised below. The fact that clear recommendations have been provided by industrial respondents would suggest that the industries involved in producing, using and handling food and beverage packaging believe that future lightweighting of generic containers is viable. The implementation of these individual solutions would be most effective if a holistic approach was taken, involving all supply chain partners. 6.4.1 Glass Manufacturers As the producers of glass containers, glass manufacturers were identified as key to overcoming some of the barriers identified. Specific actions that could be adopted in this sector include:

Assessing opportunities for lightweighting in advance of mould renewals.

Collaborative working between glass manufacturers where the same generic container is produced by more

than one glass manufacturer to overcome some supply chain issues.

Design families of containers with common features such as finish and footprint. This could potentially allow

greater flexibility on filling lines and enable future lightweighted containers to be used more widely.

Explore the feasibility of producing lightweight variants of existing generic containers. This would allow for

contract packers to make a gradual move to lightweighted generics which could assist in overcoming some of

the issues relating to filling line compatibility and container shape.

Promote data available on performance of lightweighted containers to help provide greater confidence along

the supply chain.

Examine opportunities for the development of new forming technologies within the UK (i.e solid blank

process). This could allow additional margins of weight reduction to be realised.

6.4.2 Contract Packers Contract packers have been identified as pivotal players in the generic container supply chain, interfacing with glass manufacturers, retailers and transport companies. They can therefore use this role to facilitate the development and uptake of lightweight generic containers by:

Expressing the needs for lightweight generics to glass manufacturers to assist in creating a demand.

Working with other contract packers, where appropriate, to approve lightweight designs of containers that

are used in high volumes by just a few contract packers.

Identifying opportunities for filling lines to be adapted to be more receptive to lightweighted containers. This

may involve using modelling equipment to identify high impact areas along lines where adjustments can be

made to equipment.

Installing only flexible filling line equipment in future to allow for a variety of containers to be processed

including lightweighted container.

6.4.3 Retailers Retailers ultimately make the decision on container selection for own-branded products. With the own-brand sector accounting for the majority of generic container use, retailers have been identified as important players in driving the demand for lightweight generic containers. Some actions that can be taken by retailers to improve this role include:

Examining options for using lighter weight generic containers on premium lines and using other elements of

pack design to differentiate from other price points.

Working with contract packers to source lightweight containers across product ranges. This could lead to

increased lightweighting by creating a consolidated approach by retailers and contract packers.

Working with distribution networks to improve handling of glass packed products and creating a better

handling ‘environment’ for lightweighted containers.



Retailers need to be mindful that cost savings are not always inherent in lightweighting generics due to the

capital costs that are often incurred.

6.4.4 Transport and Logistics Organisations Although not questioned as part of the investigation, the investigation found that transport and logistics companies working on behalf of retailers have an important role to play in allowing for the use of lightweighted generics. From the findings, it would appear that transport and logistics companies need to have regard for the products they are handling and should employ techniques as appropriate.

7.0 Conclusions 7.1 Achievements

The project has made a direct weight saving of 21,415 tonnes of glass achieved across the food, RTD and soft drink sectors, surpassing the 20,000 tonne project target. This tonnage has arisen from 25 lightweighting trials and demonstrates that glass lightweighting provides an effective means for supply chains to minimise packaging and consequently the volume of glass within the UK waste stream. Trials undertaken as part of the project have also demonstrated that glass lightweighting can be successful across a range of product types. The range of products incorporated in the project includes:

carbonated beverages;

coffee;

cooking oil;

cooking sauces;

cooking stock and marinade;

fruit juices;

jam;

mineral water;

ready to drinks;

spices and seasonings; and

tables sauces.

The project has also demonstrated that lightweighting can be undertaken on containers used for different price points from premium through to value. Containers included in the trials exemplify this with small volume generic containers contributing tonnage savings in addition to leading iconic brands such as Coca Cola and Uncle Ben’s. Although focused on reducing material in the UK waste stream, this project has also provided a CO²e reduction of 14,447 tonnes per annum, resulting from a reduction in material use and a reduction in energy consumed in manufacturing. In addition to measurable outputs, the project has also worked to address a number of barriers that can hinder glass lightweighting. These are described below along with progress made to overcome some barriers which may continue to present a challenge. 7.2 Barriers Addressed

7.2.1 Filling Line Suitability The ability of filling lines to handle lightweighted glass had been highlighted as a common concern by several trial participants at the outset of the project. This is partly due to the age of some filling lines found within the food sector exerting greater forces and impacts on containers than newer, smoother filling lines. This issue was addressed in several of the trials by undertaking filling line modelling during trial planning. Using technology such as Sensor Wireless “Agent QC”, which incorporates devices such as accelerometers, data can be obtained on impacts and collisions that occur as a container passes along a filling line. This information is relayed to a PDA unit in real time which allows the operator to observe specific locations where impacts occur. From the output data, filling line operators and glass manufacturers can identify areas that may be of concern when considering the introduction of lightweight containers. The identification of specific impact areas of concern on filling lines then provides opportunities for modifications to be made. Trials undertaken as part of the project have identified that a range of simple modifications can be made to reduce filling line impacts thus demonstrating that modifying filling lines is not necessarily capital intensive. These include:

adjusting guard rails and splitters;

adjusting the timing of equipment that handles glass containers such as de-palletisers;

controlling the amount of containers in holding areas along the filling line;


adjusting conveyor specific speeds, particularly where conveyors consist of multi-speed elements; and

adjusting overall line speed.

7.2.2 Lightweighting Generic Containers Changing the design of containers supplied to a range of customers had been identified as a potential barrier to lightweighting. This is as a result of one container potentially running on multiple filling lines and therefore altering the design may lead to incompatibility for some users. One approach taken in several trials involving the lightweighting of generic containers was to explore options for weight reduction whilst maintaining certain critical dimensions. In some trials, such as the range of five mineral water bottles, savings have been made by improving the flow of glass within the mould to reduce the amount of glass used. In another trial, the dimensions of the container were identified as being critical in relation to filling line tolerances. These included height, width, finish and footprint. Design work was then undertaken to lightweight the container by only modifying nominal measurements such as the shoulder of containers without impacting on the critical dimensions. Supporting research was undertaken by Faraday Packaging Partnership, which examined issues associated with the lightweighting of generic containers. The full report is available at: www.wrap.org.uk/retail. 7.2.3 Financial Cost Financial cost of lightweighting was cited as a potential barrier by various partners. Financial concerns have related to both the actual cost of undertaking lightweighting and how costs should be absorbed along the supply chain. An approach to overcoming financial cost has been demonstrated in project trials. Reviewing residual mould life and identifying products for which new moulds are due provides an opportunity for lightweighting to be built into the re-tooling process. This has the effect of reducing overall design costs and eliminating the problem of losses associated with writing off capital equipment prematurely, helping to address financial barriers. 7.2.4 Consumer Perception Consumer perception of lightweighting is a potential barrier that was identified, particularly for brand owners and retailers. Barriers appear to stem from concerns that lightweighting could affect consumer choices, which could consequently affect sales volumes. Research was commissioned to specifically explore consumer perception issues and any potential correlation with glass lightweighting. The results of this work have demonstrated that the weight of containers has minimal impact on consumer choices, which are primarily driven by other factors, particularly container shape. 7.2.5 UK Manufacturing Capability One of the potential barriers identified in the risk assessment of the project methodology was the capability of manufacturers to produce lightweight containers in the UK. Issues relating to this were attributed to forming processes used by UK manufacturers. In one project trial, a brand owner considered changing to an overseas glass manufacturer to make weight savings on the existing container design. Although a weight saving would have been achieved, additional environmental impacts would have been incurred through the import of containers. Following discussions with the current UK glass supplier and the project management team, a trial was undertaken to explore options for further lightweighting with the current UK supplier. The outcome of this approach was a UK produced container that matched the weight savings of a design produced overseas, and therefore negated any additional transportation impacts. The key message from this trial is that brand owners should work with their current manufacturers to explore opportunities to match weight savings that could be achieved by sourcing lightweight containers from overseas.



7.3 Remaining Potential Barriers

Although the project has successfully overcome a number of barriers, some issues remain. These are set out below. 7.3.1 Food Market Proliferation & Volume Issues In comparison to sectors such as soft drinks, mineral water and RTDs, the food sector faces issues relating to the diversity of containers available and the volume of containers that are produced. It has been suggested by some project partners that problems relating to proliferation and volume originate from when many of today’s brands were owned by independent companies, all of whom used different containers as a means of brand identity. As many of these have been taken over by larger organisations, use of these containers has continued, resulting in some companies having a large portfolio of glass jars. This diversity in containers can mean that no single container is produced in significant annual volumes compared to generic containers that are used over several products. This can therefore limit the amount of tonnage that can be obtained by making a unit weight saving on a specific container. The vast range of food containers can also result in high development costs to companies wishing to make weight savings across their brands as re-design and lightweighting trials are required for multiple containers. Several partners have indicated that these issues continue to present a barrier when considering the financial cost of lightweighting compared to the potential savings available. One potential means of addressing issues relating to the diversity of containers and their respective volumes is for food manufacturers to rationalise containers used across their ranges. Rationalisation has been successfully implemented in beverage sectors such as beer and mineral water and this has enabled large tonnages of glass to be saved through lightweighting. 7.3.2 Branding and Marketing Product branding and marketing issues also continue to represent barriers to the lightweighting of some products. This appears to be more relevant to branded products where the container forms part of the overall brand image. An example of branding issues acting as a barrier to lightweighting has been highlighted in this project where one brand owner put forward a food container that possessed a unique shape. The manufacturer determined that a weight saving could be achieved although significant changes in the shape of the jar would be required. On reviewing the lightweighting proposal, the brand owner rejected the changes on the grounds that it would radically alter the image of the brand which could adversely affect sales volumes. Although not demonstrated in this project, one way of overcoming this barrier could be for brand owners and retailers to use other elements of pack design such as labelling and closures to differentiate products and create brand identity. 7.3.3 Initiating Lightweighting The project has demonstrated the potential for glass lightweighting. In reviewing the project with partners it has been stated that a lack of clear leadership may hinder future lightweighting. Despite agreements such as the Courtauld Commitment, concerns were raised that partners in supply chains may examine other weight reduction options such as material substitution and overlook glass lightweighting. Concerns related to a lack of guidance on how to lightweight, may be diminished following the dissemination of findings from this project. 7.3.4 Publicity and Confidentiality Partners involved in the GlassRite: Food, RTD and Soft Drink project have provided information where possible to promote lightweighting activities. However, it has been suggested amongst project partners that publicity of lightweighting activities, and the resultant weight savings, could be a hindrance to future glass lightweighting activities.


Several reasons have been identified as to the causes of this barrier, including confidentiality agreements that may exist between partners within the same supply chain. In some examples identified within project trials, confidentiality agreements have prevented key information from being provided to third parties for reporting and promotion. Another reason cited for publicity being a barrier within the food and beverage sector is the reluctance to release information due to price reduction requests from the retail sector. 7.3.5 Competition with Other Environmental Concerns Lightweighting is one approach that can be taken to reduce the environmental impact of the food and packaging sectors by reducing the weight of glass in the waste stream and minimising environmental impacts arising in production. However, a number of other environmental metrics become applicable to supply chains as debates on sustainability advance, including focusing on food waste reduction, reducing secondary and tertiary packaging and developing new materials. The project has identified examples where focus on other issues to reduce environmental impact has provided competition to glass lightweighting, which has potentially reduced weight savings obtained from trials. An example of this has been where a glass manufacturer has reduced the amount of tertiary packaging used in the transportation of containers, which in turn meant that lightweighting could not be exploited to its full potential.


8.0 Recommendations Reviewing the project activity and issues identified by GlassRite: Food, RTD and Soft Drinks allows for recommendations to be made that will assist further lightweighting activity. 8.1 Working in Partnership

The trials undertaken by the project have demonstrated that a consolidated approach involving partners from all sectors of the supply chain is most effective in developing lightweight containers. Engaging supply chain partners at an early stage of the project allows for all issues (such as filling and transportation) to be considered prior to undertaking manufacturing trials. Regular dialogue amongst partners can also help to identify potential solutions to barriers by drawing upon a wide range of knowledge and expertise. 8.2 Glass Lightweighting Effectiveness

The project has demonstrated that glass lightweighting is an effective approach to reducing packaging weight. Companies using glass packaging should therefore look to use the project findings highlighted in this report to undertake glass lightweighting on their own products. This is particularly relevant given the increasing pressure on food and beverage supply chains to optimise packaging, make weight savings and reduce the environmental impact of the packaging. Through the various manufacturing trials detailed in this report, it has been demonstrated that lightweighting can be undertaken across a range of products at different price points. This observation is particularly salient as it establishes that glass lightweighting is not just confined to brand leaders or containers with large production volumes. 8.3 Take Advantages of Opportunities

The project identified that the renewal of mould equipment provides an excellent opportunity to undertake glass lightweighting. This can assist in overcoming barriers such as cost, as design work can be incorporated into the production of new mould sets. In addition to this, the disposal of capital equipment with residual value is also avoided. It is recommended that partners within the supply chain should work closely with glass manufacturers to identify when mould sets will expire. This could form the basis for planning and implementing future lightweighting. This recommendation could be extended to re-branding activities and new product development where glass manufacturers are commissioned by brand owners to produce new container designs. Brand owners should consider incorporating lightweighting into specifications provided to glass manufacturers for such containers. 8.4 Developing Lightweight Generics

This project has identified many issues that are potential barriers to lightweighting generic containers. One recommendation that can be made is for glass manufacturers to develop new lightweight generics which could be variants of existing generic containers. The aim of developing such lightweight variants would be to gradually phase out existing ‘heavy weight’ containers. By introducing lightweight variants to their portfolios, glass manufacturers would provide their customers with the opportunity to adopt lightweight design over time. This could overcome some of the potential filling line barriers identified by this project. Developing lightweight containers in partnership with customers that use large volumes of generics could help glass manufacturers to make such containers commercially viable. 8.5 Continuing the Project Momentum

The project has brought together a diverse project consortium from several sectors, including food and drink manufacturers, contract packers, retailers, brands and glass manufacturers. This consortium has been enthusiastic in embracing the aims of the project along with wider environmental and sustainability issues. It is therefore recommended that the momentum created by these project partners is built upon. This could involve working with these partners to examine other glass lightweighting opportunities not captured by this project and expanding activities more broadly within the food and drink sectors.



8.6 Explore Further Issues As identified in section 7.3 of this report, a number of potential issues remain which could represent barriers to future lightweighting activity. It is therefore recommended that further research is undertaken to identify how these issues can be overcome. Companies engaging in lightweighting should not be deterred by these remaining issues. All manufacturing trials provide an opportunity for innovative solutions to be applied as they have in many of the GlassRite: Food, RTD and Soft Drink trials.

Light-Weighting Perception Study Bangorr University

Table of Contents

1.0 S U M M ARY 1

2.0 I NTRODUCTION 3

2.1 Project Context 3

2.2 Research Questions 3

2.3 Outline of the Experimental Design 4

3.0 M ETHODS 6

3.1 P a r t i c i p a n ts 6

3.2 M a t e r i a l s 7

3.3 P r o c e d u r e 1 1

4.0 R E S U L TS 1 6

4.1 Shopping Task 1 6

4.2 Choices 1 8

4.3 Magnitude Estimation 2 1

4.4 P o s t - e x p e r iment Questionnaire 2 4

5.0 CONCLUSIONS 2 7

APPENDIX A: PARTICIPANT

DEMOGRAPHICS 2 8

APPENDIX B: PRODUCT DETAILS 2 9

APPENDIX C: PRE-EXPERIMENT

QUESTIONNAIRE 3 6

APPENDIX D: POST-EXPERIMENT

QUESTIONNAIRE 4 0

1.0 Summary

his report details research undertaken by the Centre for Experimental Consumer Psychology in the School of Psychology at Bangor University for the Faraday Packaging Partnership and the Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP).

The purpose of the project was to measure the effect of glass light-weighting of household food and drink products on consumers’ preferences and perception of product value and quality.

Methods: 1. In the course of a five-part experiment, we measured in 100 consumers the perception of 4

product categories:

1) Flavoured Alcoholic Beverages-FAB 2) Coffee 3) Jam 4) Sauce

2. Each product was packaged in containers (without brand labels) of three different shape types. For each combination of category and shape type, we assessed perception of value and quality (and observed handling) of product filled containers of three different weights:

1) Original: weight unchanged 2) Light: equivalent to container being 15% lighter 3) Superlight: equivalent to container being 30% lighter

3. Participants completed five tasks:

1) A shopping questionnaire to collect demographic information and shopping habit information.

2) A shopping task requiring each participant to guess the price of each product whilst taking them from a shelf and placing them into a hand-held basket. Behaviour was videotaped and analysed.

3) A choice task where a “favourite” was chosen between two same-category products that differed in shape and weight.

4) A quality estimation task, where participants made relative quality judgements about each container of a specific category.

5) A ‘recycling’ questionnaire to collect information regarding recycling habits, packaging preferences, and opinions on light-weighting information on product labels.

Results:

1. Superlight-weighting reduced consumer perception of value but light-weighting did

not. In the shopping task consumers valued light-weighted products and original weight products about the same. However, superlight products were valued at 3 pence (1.7%) less than original weight products. An expert independent observer (‘blind’ to the product’s

T


weight category) was able to judge (significantly better than chance) which weight category group a product belonged to by observing the actions, gestures and facial expressions of participants in the shopping task. This suggests that light-weighting had a systematic but modest effect on consumer actions.

2. In the choices task, participants were more likely to prefer the product with weight at or closest to the original weight than a product with an altered weight. However, container shape was the main driver of preference.

3. Light-weighting had no effect on relative quality estimates. However quality estimates increased with product weight for FABs, coffees and jams. For sauces, the opposite held; the lighter the actual product, the greater their perceived value.

4. It is important to note that in all of the experiments container shape appears to be the main driver of consumer perception and any effect of light-weighting is small.

5. Results from the post-experiment questionnaire suggest that communicating to consumers that a product has been light-weighted may be helpful and is unlikely to hinder consumer purchase decisions.


2.0 Introduction

2.1 Project Context “In July 2005, thirteen top grocery retailers demonstrated their commitment to waste minimization by signing up to an agreement, known as the Courtauld Commitment. The aim is to reduce the amount of packaging and food waste that is thrown away by households in the UK.” (WRAP website, 23/10/06). www.wrap.org.uk/courtauld The purpose of this research is to support the ongoing light-weighting work undertaken as part of the WRAP funded GlassRite project. The current project provides an insight into how the light-weighting process affects consumers’ perception of products. This report aims to provide brand owners and glass manufacturers with further information to guide their decisions regarding the light-weighting of their own glass containers.

2.2 Research Questions

Five key issues related to light-weighting were identified and examined throughout the investigation: 1) How does light-weighting affect consumers’ perceptions of value while shopping? 2) When given a choice between two bottles, how does light-weighting affect consumers’ decisions? 3) How does light-weighting affect consumers’ perceptions of quality when they are explicitly evaluating the products?

A further issue of interest was the communication of light-weighting to consumers through product labelling. Do consumers want to know about light-weighting of glass containers, and would such information influence their purchase decision? This data was collected in a post-experiment questionnaire. An important concern is product shape. Products of the same category are frequently placed in containers of different shapes. An important part of the experimental design used in the research reported here is to determine whether product shape or product weight was the significant driver of consumer perception. To analyse the effects of these two factors, we presented participants with products varying in both shape and weight. The participants in the study were never told that product weight was the variable being studied. Product weight was not raised with them and they were never asked to estimate weight or to explicitly link product weight to value, quality, or preference. Consumers are typically unaware of weight variations in products, yet they may nevertheless drive perception. Our aim here was to test this possibility.


2.3 Outline of the Experimental Design

Products from four different categories were used as materials in this investigation. These categories were chosen as they exemplify the types of products within the remit of WRAP’s food project. They were:

1) Flavoured Alcoholic Beverages (FAB; 70 cl);

2) Coffee (100 g);

3) Jam (approx. 330 g);

4) Cook-in Sauce (approx. 475 g).

The product containers were weighted (by varying the contents) into three categories:

1) Original,

2) Light (filled to be 15% lighter than the original empty container) and

3) Superlight (filled to be 30% lighter than the original empty container).

The product containers used in this study also varied in shape and were grouped into categories in order to compare the effects of container weight against the effects of container shape. Participants completed five tasks:

1) a shopping questionnaire to collect demographic information and shopping habit information;

2) a shopping task requiring each participant to guess the price of each product whilst taking them from a shelf and placing them into a hand-held basket;

3) a choice task where a choice between a series of two alternative bottle was made;

4) a quality estimation task, where participants made relative quality judgements about each bottle of a specific category;

5) a recycling questionnaire to collect information regarding recycling habits, packaging preferences, and opinions on light-weighting information labelling on products.

The following chart describes the flow of participants through each of the experimental tasks.


Figure 2.3.1 The flow of participants through the experiment including approximate time taken to complete each step.

Pre-experiment Questionnaire N = 100

Shopping Task N = 100

Choices Task N = 100

Magnitude Estimation

FAB N = 25


Coffee N = 25


Jam N = 25


Sauce N = 25

Post-experiment Questionnaire N = 100

Start

15 mins

20 mins

30 mins

15 mins

10 mins

Total approx. 1 hr 30 mins


3.0 Methods

his section of the report describes the participants recruited to take part in the study, the materials used and how they were prepared, and detailed descriptions including the design and procedure of each component in the study.

3.1 Participants One hundred participants were recruited to come to the Centre for Experimental Consumer Psyhology for one and a half hours to take part in the series of experiments outlined below. Participants gave informed consent and were paid £14 for their time (including £2 ‘winnings’ described in the Shopping Task, page 13). Participants were selected to represent a cross-section of the community, aiming to reflect a sample of consumers buying British products. The following graphs describe the sex, age and socio-economic class of the participants.

The method of obtaining the socio-economic status of the participants was sourced from the National Readership Survey (NRS) website and is described in Appendix A.

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Figure 3.1.1 Sex of the participants

Figure 3.13 Socio-economic status of the participants

Figure 3.1.2 Age of the participants


3.2 Materials

3.2.1 Product Preparation

Lists of the products used, and photos of them, can be found in Appendix B. It was important that the participants did not use pre-existing attitudes towards particular brands to inform their value judgments in the experiments. Therefore, all products used in the experiments were disguised and given a uniform appearance. Labels were removed and lids were spray-painted black. In the case of FABs, the bottles were spray-painted silver (this was necessary in order to disguise the light-weighting procedure, discussed below). The labels were replaced with generic black and white labels depicting only the product identification number (numbers 1 to 9, referred to as Brand number). The contents were all replaced with a generic equivalent, so that participants did not use the perceived quality of the contents to guide their decisions. Participants were informed that the contents had been replaced and that they should not use this to guide any of their decisions. The FABs were replaced with water, the coffees and jams were replaced with a catering brand instant coffee and mixed fruit jam, respectively, and the sauces were replaced with a catering brand tomato ketchup. Figure 3.2.1.1 Examples of the four product categories after being disguised. In order to investigate how a container’s weight might impact consumer perception, three different weight categories were investigated: 1) Original; 2) Light (15% weight reduction) and; 3) Superlight (30% weight reduction). The weight reductions refer to 15% and 30% of the container weight only, not the container plus content weight.


This light-weighting was achieved by filling the containers so that they contained less of the contents than originally contained. For example, the container of Jam 1 weighed 177g. If this container were to be light-weighted by 15% it would weigh 150g, a reduction of 27g. So, when re-filling the container with the generic jam, 27g less jam was put in the Light container than the Original container. Weightings were accurate to plus or minus 1g of the actual weight. In order to ensure that the participants were not able to see that less contents had been put into any of the products, a tube was inserted into the middle of the containers, and contents were put around it. This way the empty part of the containers was in the middle of the containers, hidden from the participants. As the contents of the coffee jars were so light, it was not possible to remove enough of the contents in order to account for 30% of the container weight. So, for the coffee category only, a Heavy weight was used. This was done by fixing weights (pennies) to the inside of the lid of the coffee jars, to the amount of 15% of the container weight. The three coffee categories (Heavy, Original, and Light) are different in increments of 15% of the container weight, like the other product categories. It was not possible to put a tube down the FAB containers, and it was important that the contents did not “slosh about” as participants handled them. Therefore, some of the liquid that filled the FAB containers was replaced with vermiculite, a cork-like substance that allowed us to fill up space in the bottles without adding weight. The vermiculite was visible through the glass, and so the FAB bottles were spray-painted silver in order to: a) disguise this and; b) more accurately reflect the packaging of FABs on the market, most of which are packaged in opaque plastic sleeves.


3.2.2 Product Groups For each of the product categories, there were nine different brands that could be grouped into three different shape types (A, B or C). Three examples of each container was used, each a different weight. Brands to be used in the experiment were specifically chosen because they fit into one of the shape categories. Grouping the jars in this way allowed us to compare the effects of weight on evaluation to something more explicitly obvious to the participants, the appearance. As the products and contents were disguised in every other way, the shape of the containers is the only visual cue left to discriminate between them. For each brand, there were three different examples: the Original, the Light and the Superlight (or Heavy, Original and Light in the case of coffee). These were identifiable only by a small code placed underneath the container. The participants had no way to tell which weight they were receiving. In fact, at no time throughout the experiment were participants informed that there were different weights of each brand, and they only saw one example of each brand at any one time. So, for four categories, with three different shape types, each with three different brands, each with three exemplars at different weights, there were a total of 108 containers used in this experiment (4 x 3 x 3 x 3). A further four containers (one of each product type) were used as “standard’ containers for the Magnitude Estimation task (described below). The standard containers were chosen to represent an approximate average shape of the containers in that product category. This product was only represented at Light weight (Original in the case of coffee).


FAB Shape

A

B C

Smooth Shoulder

Curvy Hard Shoulder Standard

Weight

Original 3 3 3 - Light 3 3 3 1 Superlight 3 3 3 -

Coffee Shape

A

B C

Square Squat Tall Standard

Weight

Heavy 3 3 3 - Original 3 3 3 1 Light 3 3 3 -


Jam Shape

A

B C

Short Base and Shoulder

Regular Standard

Weight

Original 3 3 3 - Light 3 3 3 1 Superlight 3 3 3 -

Sauces Shape

A

B C

Tapered Straight Rounded Standard

Weight

Original 3 3 3 - Light 3 3 3 1 Superlight 3 3 3 - Figure 3.2.2.1 The number of brands in each product condition. Numbers are described by weight type and shape type per product category. Pictures represent examples of each of the shape types: a full list of products and weights can be found in Appendix B. Note: Hereafter, when referring to Original, Light and Superlight categories, we are including the Heavy coffee with the Original, the Original coffee with the Light and the Light coffee with the Superlight data from the other three product categories. FABs were referred to as “alcopops” to the participants.


3.3 Procedure

3.3.1 Pre- and Post-Experiment Questionnaires The first questionnaire (Appendix C) was given to the participants before they took part in any tasks, and contained questions concerning demographic information. This data was used to obtain the sex, age and socio-economic status information described above. The shopping habit data from the pre-experiment questionnaire was also used to assign people to product groups in the Magnitude Estimation task (described below). The post-experiment questionnaire was administered following completion of all the experimental tasks. This questionnaire investigated the recycling habits and the packaging preferences of the participants, and their attitudes to a variety of packaging materials, including glass. It was here that we collected the data regarding explicit labelling regarding light-weighting. This questionnaire can be found in Appendix D.


3.3.2 Shopping Task Participants saw four shelves of containers. Each shelf had product brands 1 to 9 in a particular category. Participants received a shopping list and were told that they must find each item on the list, in turn, and take it from the shelf. Once they had picked up the item, they must guess its price and then place it in the basket. The participant then found the next item on the list and did this until they had found every item on the list (and the shelves were empty). Participants received feedback to tell them how good their price guess was. They were informed at the beginning of the experiment that if they guessed within 10p of the “real” price three times, they would win an extra £2 in addition to their £12 participation payment. Feedback was given after every trial informing participants how accurately they had guessed. This was done in order to keep the participants motivated and trying hard throughout the task, so that their prices estimations reflected genuine evaluations of value. On each shelf there was only one product category. There was one of each brand on each shelf (brands 1 to 9). Three of these were Original weight items, three were Light weight items, and three were Superlight weight items. These were counterbalanced across participants so that one third of the participants saw Jam 1 at its Original weight, one third saw Jam 1 at Light weight and the remaining third saw Jam 1 at Superlight weight, for example. The shopping list had 36 items on it, in a random order. The 36 items were each a unique product brand. There were four product categories, each with nine brands. The items are placed in a random order on the shelf. The shelf order was also balanced so that 25% of participants saw coffees on shelf 1, 25% saw them on shelf 2 and so on. Participants were informed at the beginning of the task that the coffees and the sauces cost approximately £1.50 and the alcopops and jams cost approximately £2. The feedback that was given to the participants after every price guess was false: the “real” prices of the products were randomly generated by the computer, based on the receipts from the product purchases. The participants were informed at the end of the task that the prices had been false, and that they would receive the £2 “winnings” anyway. In total, the data generated from this task were 33 price guesses (100 participants, one third seeing each container) for each product brand (9 brands x 4 categories), at each weight. The data were analysed by weight and by shape (which weights or shapes received higher price guesses) to determine the most salient


features participants used when making their value judgments. With their consent, the participants were videotaped whilst performing this task. After the experiment, an expert independent observer ‘blind’ to the weight classification of each product viewed all the videotapes and analysed the participants’ actions, gestures and facial expressions. From this, the observer judged which three of each product category belonged to each weight category. The observer placed each item on a scale of 1 to 5 of how likely it was to belong to either the Original, light or Superlight groups. Using these ratings the observer then assigned three items from each product category to each weight category. Data were analysed relative to chance performance on the part of the observer.


3.3.3 Choice Task In this experiment, participant and experimenter sat on either side of a screen, designed to obscure all the containers from the participant’s view until the moment they were to make a judgement about them. This experiment simply required participants to chose their favourite from a pair of containers with the response “left” or “right”. Participants were given no feedback regarding what they should base their decision on: they were simply instructed to pick their favourite. A computer on the experimenter side of the screen “beeped” three times, and on the third beep the pair of containers were handed to the participant through a gap in the screen. On receipt of the containers participants made their decision. Participants wore a microphone headset which allowed us to record their reaction time to make a response. Timing began after the third beep, and ceased as soon as participants spoke into the microphone. Participants were instructed that their first response should only be

“left” or “right”. The gathering of reaction time data allowed us to filter out trials in which a response was made before the participants had received the products (and so weight could not have been an influencing factor in that decision). Container pairings were critical in this experiment. Participants only ever received two items of the same product category together. So they only ever had to choose between two coffees for example, not a coffee and a jam. Also, the shape categories of the two

containers were never the same. So they never received two coffee shape A’s together. Further, participants never received two containers of the same weight category together. This way, we were able to analyse whether the influencing factor in choosing a favourite container was weight category, or shape category. See the table below for detailed container pairings. Participants were given the products in blocks: they received 18 pairs of one product, then 18 pairs of a second product and so on until 76 pairs (152 containers in total). Block order was counterbalanced across participants. For the 18 pairs (36 containers) in a block, one third of the containers received were Original, one third were Light and one third were Superlight weight. The brands and shapes chosen per pair were pseudo-randomly selected and post-hoc tests analysed their influence.


Figure 3.3.3.1 Container pair combinations for a given product category. White cells indicate exact repetitions or redundancies. Light blue cells indicate that either weight category or shape category are repeated. Dark blue cells are the valid cells (18 cells) tested here. (O = Original, L = Light, SL = Superlight Weight Categories).

Container 1

A B C

O L SL O L SL O L SL

O

L A

SL

O

L B

SL

O

L

Conta

iner

2

C

SL


3.3.4 Magnitude Estimation In this experiment, participants were given one container at a time. First, they received a “standard” container that they were told had a “quality value” of 100. Participants were given a short time to examine this container. The standard container was then taken away from the participant and replaced with a test container. The participants’ task was to compare this container to the standard by giving it a value. If the participant thought that the test container was half the quality of the standard container, they were told to assign it a value of 50; if they thought that the test container was twice the quality, they were told to assign it a value of 200. Participants were permitted to use any numbers they felt appropriate and were given no other guidelines as to what they should base their decision on: only the “quality”. The standard containers can be found in Appendix B. Once the participant had made the magnitude estimation to the test container, they were given back the standard container to study before receiving the next container to rate. This was a between-group experiment: 25% of participants made magnitude estimations for FABs, 25% for coffees, 25% for jam and 25% for sauces. Which group each participant was assigned to was determined by their answers to questionnaire 1. This was done using the age and sex data: it was important to balance these groups properly, so that all the younger participants did not end up giving estimations for FABs and the older participants giving estimations for coffees for example. The frequency of purchase data was also used: wherever possible, participants were assigned to a product category which they regularly bought e.g. a participant giving estimations for coffees is likely to be a high frequency coffee purchaser. The following graphs describe the distribution of participant age and sex by the four product category groups. Participants gave magnitude estimations to every product within the product category. That is, every brand, at every weight (so they would see Jam 1 three times: the Original once, the Light once and the Superlight once). Brand order and weight categories were randomly selected throughout the block of trials. Brand repetitions were distributed throughout the block of trials in order that the participants did not try to rely on memory too much to make their judgments to the same brand: they had to rely on re-evaluations to do this task. Participants thus gave magnitude estimations to 27 products.


Figure 3.3.4.1 Distribution of Participant Age by Product Category Group

Figure 3.3.4.1 Distribution of Participant Sex by Product Category Group


4.0 Results

his section outlines the main results of the analyses. Results are presented by experiment. For the purpose of clarification, where we report that a difference is “significant”, we mean that it is statistically significant at the p < .05 level. Error bars

on graphs represent plus and minus one standard error of the mean. These bars can be thought of as variability bars, among participants or among products. To interpret, if the bars on two columns are far apart from each other, it is likely that the two columns are statistically significantly different. If there is some overlap between the bars, it is less likely that they are different to a statistically significant level. Summary findings are presented in blue.

4.1 Shopping Task

4.1.1 Value Ratings Price guesses from the participants were first collapsed across product category and shape, to give us the overall results for the effect of light weighting on participants’ price estimations. We found a nonstatistical difference in value ratings (price estimates) between the Original and Light weight categories. Light-weighting products by 15% does not appear to change participants’ perceptions of value. However, combining Original and Light estimates and comparing them to the Superlight weight price estimates reveals that participants’ value judgments are negatively affected by light-weighting products by 30% (t (1,99) = 2.10, p < .05). Participants judge the products to be worth approximately 3 pence less than Original or Light weight products. This is approximately a 1.7% reduction in perceived price. Figure 4.1.1.1 Price estimations by weight category.

T

3p


We then collapsed the price estimations by product weight and examined the effect of shape within each product category. Interestingly, container shape had a large influence on the value estimations. FAB Shape A was thought to be about 9 pence cheaper than either B or C (A – B t (1,99) = 2.45, p < .05). Coffee C was thought to be about 21 pence cheaper than Coffees A or B (A – C t (1, 99) = 5.73, p < .05). Jam A was judged to be 13 pence more expensive than Jam B (A – B t (1, 99) = 3.06, p < .05), which in turn was thought to be 7 pence more expensive than Jam C (B – C t (1,99) = 2.37, p < .05). As for the sauces, Sauce B was thought to be about 9 pence cheaper than either A or C (B – C t (1,99) = 2.35, p < .05).

Figure 4.1.1.2 Price estimations by shape category, per product category. Summary: Light-weighting (15%) had no effect on value judgments, but superlight-weighting (30%) came at a cost of approximately 3 pence in participants’ value judgments. This can be viewed as a 1.7% reduction in the product’s actual price. These differences are very small compared to the effects of shape. Varying the shape of the products can cause differences of 20 pence (11.4%) to participants’ value judgments.


4.1.2 Observer Video Analysis

Figure 4.1.2.1 Observer’s performance on categorising products according to weight category. The dotted blue line represents chance performance (33%). The expert observer viewed the video of each participant ‘shopping’ for each product whilst being uninformed about which weight category each product belonged to. Nevertheless the observer was able to correctly categorise the heaviest and lightest weight category products significantly better than chance guessing. The observer was best at spotting the Original weight products (t (1, 99) = 2.25, p < .05), and was approximately 4.5% better than chance. The observer was somewhat able to spot Superlight products (t (1, 99) = 2.22, p < .05), performing about 2% better than chance. While performance on the two extreme weight categories was statistically better than chance guessing, performance on the Light category was not.

Summary: Participants’ behaviour changed to an observable degree when handling products belonging to different weight categories. The independent observer was able to tell, to a level above chance, when they were handling either Original or Superlight weight products.


4.2 Choices

Product preferences were first analysed by weight category. The product in the heavier weight category was chosen more often than the product in the lighter weight category of the pair, F (1, 99) = 5.96, p < .05. This can be seen in the figure below, although the effects are small, in the order of 3%.

Figure 4.2.1 The percentage of times each weight category was chosen from a pair The data were re-analysed according to the actual weight of the products in the pair. Whereas the left product might belong to the Light category, and the right product might belong to the Superlight category, it may be that the left product is actually heavier than the right product, depending on the starting weights of the containers in question. Analysing the likelihood of choosing the heavier item of the pair revealed that for FABs and sauces, participants were actually more likely to choose the lighter item of the pair (FAB t (1, 99) = 2.24, p < .05; Sauce t (1, 99) = 5.16, p < .05). There was no difference for coffees or jams. Again, these differences were small: the largest effect was for the sauce category, approximately 10%.


Figure 4.2.2 Percentage of times participants chose the heavier (positive) v. the lighter (negative) product As the categories were behaving in different ways, and this seemed to contradict the findings from the weight category, it seemed likely that container shape was having an influence. Therefore, the data were examined by shape type per product category. In the FAB category, B was preferred to A (t (1, 99) = 5.69, p < .05) and C (t (1,99 = 6.12, p < .05), and A was preferred to C (t (1, 99) = 2.33, p < .05).

4.2.3 FAB product category by shape pair combinations

Choose Heavy

Choose Light

A Smooth Shoulder

B Curvy

C Hard

Shoulder


In the coffee category, B was preferred to A (t (1, 99) = 2.50, p < .05) and C (t (1,99 = 2.63, p < .05), but there was no difference between A and C.

4.2.4 Coffee product category by shape pair combinations In the jam category, B was preferred to C (t (1, 99) = 2.81, p < .05), but there were no differences between A and B or A and C.

4.2.5 Jam product category by shape pair combinations

A Square

B Squat

C Tall

A Short

B Base and Shoulder

C Regular


Finally, in the sauce category, large differences were found. A was preferred to both B (t (1, 99) = 7.19, p < .05) and C (t (1, 99) = 5.74, p < .05), and C was preferred to B (t (1, 99) = 6.72, p < .05). It is here that the actual weight difference effect (figure 4.2.2) becomes clear: shape category A was on average much lighter than C (about 155 g lighter), which was in turn slightly lighter than B (about 10 g lighter).

4.2.6 Sauce product category by shape pair combinations Compared to the effects of container weight, the effects of container shape were very large, in the order of 20% to 50%.

Summary: From a pair of products, participants were more likely to prefer the product belonging to a heavier weight category. This effect did not carry through to actual weights, where participants were more likely to choose the lighter product. While these effects were statistical, they were very small. In fact, these effects were dwarfed by the effects of container shape on container preference. It appears that the actual weight effect was being driven by shape preferences.

A Tapered

B Straight

C Rounded


4.3 Magnitude Estimation When explicitly asked to assess product quality, the weight category of the product made no difference to the magnitude estimation made by the participants. There were no differences between any of the weight categories for any of the product categories. Figure 4.3.1 Magnitude estimations by weight category It was a different story for the shape categories of the products though. Within the FABs, shape B was thought to be of higher quality than A (t (1, 99) = 2.40, p < .05) which was in turn thought to be of higher quality than C (t (1, 99) = 4.08, p < .05). This pattern is consistent with the choice data. In the coffee product category, shape A was thought to be of higher quality than C (t (1, 99) = 2.94, p < .05), but there was no difference between B and either A or C. This pattern was different from that seen in the choice data, suggesting that preference and quality are not the same for this category. In the jams, like the coffees, A was thought to be of higher quality than C (t (1, 99) = 4.68, p < .05), but there was no difference between B and either A or C. As with coffee, this pattern was different from that seen in the choice data, suggesting that preference and quality are not the same for this category.


Sauce shape C was thought to be of higher quality than shape B (t (1, 99) = 2.95, p < .05), as was shape A, although marginally (t (1, 99) = 1.99, p = .06). There was no difference in the perceived quality between shape categories A and C. As with coffee, this pattern was different from that seen in the choice data, suggesting that preference and quality are not the same for this category.

Figure 4.3.2 Magnitude estimations by shape category When the magnitude estimations were analysed by actual weight, some interesting patterns emerged. Product weights were sorted by the percent different from the standard container’s weight, and the estimations were sorted by the difference from 100 (the standard container’s value). These two variables were then correlated for each product category. The FAB category had a significant positive correlation (r = .076, p < .05). This means that as the containers became lighter than the standard FAB, they were given quality scores lower than 100, and as the containers became heavier than the standard FAB, they were given scores higher than 100. The coffee category also followed this trend with a significant positive correlation (r = .12, p < .05). The jam category had a positive trend that was not significant. However, the jams that were brand 2 stood out as outliers: they were given much higher scores than the other jams, regardless of their weight. Once these outliers were removed from the analysis, this positive correlation also became significant (r = .095 p < .05).


Interestingly, the sauces revealed a significant negative correlation (r = -1.39, p < .05). As the sauces became lighter than the standard FAB, they were given scores higher than 100, and as the bottles became heavier than the standard FAB, they were given scores lower than 100. The evaluations of this category appear once again to be driven by the shape: the “tapered” shape containers receiving much more favourable rates. This seems to be emphasised when the container is lighter.

Figure 4.3.3 FAB category magnitude estimations plotted for each container type (brand x weight category) relative to the standard container


Figure 4.3.4 Coffee category magnitude estimations plotted for each container type (brand x weight category) relative to the standard container

Figure 4.3.5 Jam category magnitude estimations plotted for each container type (brand x weight category) relative to the standard container

Outliers


Figure 4.3.6 Sauce category magnitude estimations plotted for each container type (brand x weight category) relative to the standard container

Summary: When explicit quality judgements were assessed via magnitude estimations, it appears that the shape of the products is the driving factor. There was no effect of weight categories in any of the product categories. However, when the containers were examined by their actual weight relative to the standard, it was found that for FABs, coffees and jams, the heavier the container, the higher the estimated quality value. This trend was reversed for the sauces for which lighter containers were estimated to have a higher quality value.


4.4 Post-experiment Questionnaire

The following charts describe the recycling habits of the participants. The majority of participants recycle, and recycle most products, although plastic to a lesser degree. Participants tend to recycle at home where possible, using council collections.

Figure 4.4.1 Do participants recycle?

Of the participants who said “yes”… Figure 4.4.2 What do participants recycle?

Figure 4.4.3 Where do participants recycle?


When asked about their preferred packaging materials, most participants selected glass. When asked specifically about each of the product categories, glass was preferred to plastic in all four, especially for jams and sauces for which approximately 92% of participants selected glass packaging as their favourite.

Figure 4.4.5 Participants’ packaging preferences by product category

Figure 4.4.4 What are participants’ favourite packaging materials?


Participants were asked about the advantages and disadvantages of plastic and glass as packaging materials. The tables below summarise their responses. Any response which was cited by less than 10% of participants is not reported. Figure 4.4.6 Advantages and disadvantages of plastic and glass as perceived by participants. The numbers refer to the percentage of participants who reported each advantage or disadvantage. Plastic

Advantages

Disadvantages

Light 66 Environmentally unfriendly 47 Unbreakable 39 Not biodegradable 43 Cheap 30 Hard to recycle 36 Crushable 20 Weak 20 Malleable 19 Source of litter 13 Durable 18 Affects food 12 Recyclable 17 Unattractive 11 Impermeable 12 Hard to reuse 10

Glass

Advantages

Disadvantages

Recyclable 61 Breakable 70 Reusable 35 Heavy 69 Attractive 30 Dangerous 26 Transparent 27 Expensive 15 Does not affect food 23

Durable 17

% %

% %


When asked how they would react to a specific “light-weight” label on a product’s packaging, very few participants reported that this would put them off buying the product. Of the remaining participants, responses were split fairly equally between light-weight labelling encouraging purchase, and having no influence (with “encouraged” having a slightly larger margin).

Figure 4.4.7 Light-weight labelling and purchase decisions

Summary:

The majority of the participants tested in this study recycle and prefer glass as a packaging material to plastic. When asked about the advantages and disadvantages of plastic and glass it was found that participants perceive the advantages of plastic to be light and unbreakable, and its main disadvantages are that it is bad for the environment and weak. Glass by contrast is thought to be good for the environment, attractive, and strong, but heavy and dangerous if broken. Very few of the participants would be discouraged by explicit labelling on the product explaining that the packaging had been light-weighted.


5.0 Conclusions

eight is a driver of consumer perception. In a series of three tasks we found that weight has a small, but statistical, influence on consumer estimations of value and quality.

In the shopping task it was found that while products light-weighted by 15% of their empty container’s weight were valued the same as containers at their original weight, light-weighting to 30% produced a 3 pence drop in participants’ estimated value compared to containers at their original weight. 3 pence in this task, for these products is equivalent to 1.7%. It is important to note that these effects are small: when the effects of the container shape were analysed, differences of up to 20 pence (11.4%) were found. From this we would extrapolate that superlight-weighting a £20 bottle of whiskey would cause consumers to value that bottle 34 pence less than the original, at £19.66. A 15% light-weighted container though is most likely to be within an ‘acceptable variation’ zone, and appears not to affect perceived price. The expert independent observer of the participants in the shopping task also produced some interesting results. The observer was able to tell, by actions, gestures and facial expressions, which weight category group an item belonged to. Again this was a small but statistical effect. The observer was particularly good at detecting when an item was at its original weight. This suggests than when a container’s weight varies from the expected or familiar weight, consumers’ handling of that container changes. Interestingly, it did not change enough for Light products to be detected but did for Superlight containers, suggesting again that a 15% light-weighted container is within this ‘acceptable variation’ zone.

In the choices task, weight had a consistent but small effect. When given a pair of containers, participants were likely to prefer the container whose weight was closest to its original weight. When given a choice between a light-weighted container and a container at its original weight, they were likely to go for the original-weight container. When given a choice between a light-weighted container and a superlight-weighted container, they were likely to choose the light-weighted container. Again, it appears that participants were sensitive to the familiar weight of the container, and preferred containers that were presented at weights that matched their expectancies. It is important to think of these effects in terms of familiarity

W


though, because they did not translate to actual weights of the items. In fact, participants were more likely to prefer a lighter container than a heavier one, an effect that is most likely being driven by the shape of the containers. This is most evident for the sauces where shape A (the tapered conrainers) are a clear favourite of the participants, but they also weigh less than the other two sauce shape types. The effects of weight found in this experiment was dwarfed by the effects of shape. The nominal weight categories produced no effects in the magnitude estimation task. The effect of familiarity was obscured in this task because we were asking participants to compare a given container to a standard container. Now, instead of comparing the container to their own expectancies of it, they were explicitly comparing it to another container, therefore removing their own expectancies from the evaluation process. When the results were analysed by actual weight, some

interesting patterns emerged. For the FABs, coffees and jams, as a product became heavier; it was more likely to be given a higher estimation of value. For the sauces, it was the opposite: as the containers became lighter they were more likely to be given a higher estimation of value. Importantly, these effects were small and were surpassed by the effects of container shape. Throughout the series of experiments the weight of the containers was found to have small, but consistent effects. Analysing the nominal weight of the containers suggested that consumers prefer items that match their expectancies, that are familiar. Analysing the actual weight of the containers suggested that, in general, consumers prefer items that are heavier (although the effects of the sauce category make these results less than clear-cut). Finally, both of these effects were vastly overshadowed by the effects of container shape, which appears to be the main driver in consumer perceptions of value. From the post-experiment questionnaire, it was found that the communication of light-weighted glass to consumers may be helpful to, and it is unlikely to hinder consumer purchase decisions. Indeed, if weight does indeed have this small but consistent effect as found here, communicating this process to the consumer may allow them to put aside product weight as a factor in their decision processes, reducing any possibility that modest light-weighting might be detrimental.


Appendix A: Participant Demographics

Source: nrs.co.uk

Social Grade is determined by the occupation of the Chief Income Earner (CIE) in each household

Grade Social Status CIE’s Occupation

A Upper Middle Class

Higher managerial, administrative or professional

B Middle Class Intermediate managerial, administrative or professional

C1 Lower Middle Class Supervisory or clerical and junior managerial, administrative or professional

C2 Skilled Working Class

Skilled manual workers

D Working Class

Semi and unskilled manual workers

E Those at lowest level of subsistence

State pensioners or widows (no other earner), casual or lowest grade workers


Appendix B: Product Details

FABs

Shape Shape Description

Product ID

Brand

Product Weight

Container Weight

Original

Light

Super-light

A Smooth Shoulder

1

Taboo

70

570

1287

1202

1116

2

TVX

70

420

1140

1077

1014

3

VK Vodka Blue

70

418

1137

1074

1012

B Curvy

4

Archers Aqua

70

440

1173

1107

1041

5

Caribbean Twist

70

478

1195

1123

1052

6

Tamova Vodka Twist Blush

66

444

1130

1063

997

C Hard Shoulder

7

Bacardi Breezer

70

514

1234

1157

1080

8

Red Square

70

418

1141

1078

1016

9

Tamova Vodka Twist

Blue

70

430

1147

1083

1018

Standard

Summer Blush

70

494

1216

1142

1068


Figure 6.1 FABs with original packaging Figure 6.2 FABs after disguising and weighting


Coffees


Product ID

Brand

Product Weight

Container Weight

Heavy1

Original

Super-light

A Square

1

Clipper

100

228

356

390

322

2

Co-op Fair Trade Organic

100

206

350

381

319

3

Morrison's Gold

100

262

386

425

347

B Squat

4

Specially Selected

100

218

341

374

308

5

Percol Espresso

100

220

354

387

321

6

Tesco Gold

100

230

351

386

317

C Tall

7

Maxwell House

100

216

339

371

307

8

Morrison's Full Roast

100

212

316

348

284

9

Asda Decaffinated

Rich Roast

100

198

321

351

291

Standard

Buendia

100

250

376

414

339

1 Note that instead of Original, Light and Superlight weight categories, the coffees were weighted to be Heavy, Original, and Light.


Figure 6.3 Coffees with original packaging

Figure 6.4 Coffees after disguising and weighting


Jams

Shape Shape

Description

Product

ID

Brand

Product

Weight

Container

Weight

Original

Light

Super-

light

A Short

1

Asda Extra Special Conserve

340

177

568

541

515

2

La Vieja Fabrica

375

156

540

517

493

3

Morrison's The Best Strwberry Conserve

340

174

555

529

503

B Base and Shoulder

4

Asda Good for you peach and apricot

320

214

598

566

534

5

Hartley's Reduced Sugar

340

200

582

552

522

6

Morrison's Eat Smart

340

192

592

563

534

C Regular

7

Mackay's Preserve

300

176

547

521

494

8

Wilkin & Sons

340

164

498

473

449

9

Asda Bramley Apple

280

152

516

493

470

Standard

Marks and Spencer

340

218

590

557

525


Figure 6.5 Jams with original packaging

Figure 6.6 Jams after disguising and weighting


Cook-in Sauces


Product ID

Brand

Product Weight

Container Weight

Original

Light

Super-light

A Tapered

1

Lloyd Grossman

425

252

749

711

673

2

Napolina

400

212

684

652

620

3

Cucina

420

222

720

687

653

B Straight

4

Morrison's Indian

Sauces

500

286

897

854

811

5

Uncle Ben's

490

258

856

817

779

6

Bisto

500

298

917

872

828

C Rounded

7

Asda Creamy

Tomato

500

280

900

858

816

8

Homepride Pasta Bake

500

274

865

824

783

9

Knorr Chicken Tonight

525

248

869

832

795

Standard

Baroni

530

236

874

839

803


Figure 6.7 Cook-in Sauces with original packaging

Figure 6.8 Cook-in Sauces after disguising and weighting


Appendix C: Pre-experiment Questionnaire We would like to invite you to participate in our study on glass jars. The session will last approximately 2 hours, for which you will receive £12 total. You are asked to sign an informed consent form before starting the study. All information gathered will remain confidential. No sales or soliciting will result from your participation.

1) Gender:

� M � F

2) Ethnic background:

� White British � Black British � African � African Carribean � Chinese � Bengal Indian � Arab � Mixed � Bangladeshi � Pakistani � White other � Other (Specify) ___________________________

3) How long have been living in UK? � less than 1 year � 2-4 years � 5 years or more 4) Age: � 18 years or under � 19-29 � 30-39 � 40-49

� 50-65 � 66 or older


5) Number of family members � 1 (single) � 2 � 3 � 4 � more than 4 (specify)__________

6) Which is your school level? � none � complete secondary school

� complete college � complete university � complete post graduate degree � vocational

7) What is the current occupation of the main earner of the house? � Higher managerial, administrative or professional

� Intermediate managerial, administrative or professional � Supervisory or clerical and junior managerial, administrative or professional � Skilled manual worker � Semi and unskilled manual worker � State pensioner or widow (no other earner), casual or lowest grade worker

8) Who usually does the shopping? � you � other (specify)__________________ 9) How often do you go shopping? � once a week � 2- 3 times a week � 4 or more


10) Usually, where do you go shopping? � Aldi � Asda � Lidl � Iceland � Morrisons � Kwiksave � Sainsbury's � Tesco � Other (specify)____________________ 11) How do you usually go shopping? � by car � by walking � by bicycle � by coach

12) How many jars of jam do you buy in a month? � none

� 1-2 � 3-4 � 5 or more 13) Which brand of jam do you usually buy? ____________________ 14) How many jars of coffee do you buy in a month? � none

� 1-2 � 3-4 � 5 or more

15) Which brands of coffee do you usually buy? ____________________


16) How many jars of cook-in sauce do you buy in a month? � none

� 1-2 � 3-4 � 5-6 � 7 or more

17) Which brand of cook-in-sauce do you usually buy? ___________________

18) How many bottles of Alcopop do you buy in a month? � none � 1-2 � 3-4 � 5 or more 19) Which brand of Alcopop do you usually buy? ___________________


Appendix D: Post-Experiment Questionnaire 1a) Do you recycle? � Yes � No

If yes: 1b) Which materials?

� Plastic � Glass � Paper � Cans

If no: 1c) Why don't you recycle?

� I don't think it's useful

� I don't have enough time � I have no space at home � I'm not used to doing it

� Other _______________ 2) Where do you recycle? � at home � at recycle points

3) Which one do you prefer as packaging material? � Plastic � Glass � Cans � Other____________________


4a) Try to list the advantages of plastic as packaging material: � ______________________________ � ______________________________ � ______________________________ � ______________________________ 4b) Try to list the disadvantages of plastic as packaging material: � ______________________________ � ______________________________ � ______________________________ � ______________________________ 5a) Try to list the advantages of glass as packaging material: � ______________________________ � ______________________________ � ______________________________ � ______________________________ 5b) Try to list the disadvantages of glass as packaging material: � ______________________________ � ______________________________

� ______________________________

� ______________________________


6) For each product-category, mark which material is more suitable as packaging material:

7) Did you notice that some of the containers were lighter than others? � Yes � No

8) What would do you, if you saw “light weighted” on the packaging, (meaning that less glass is used to make the container)? � be put off by it

� be encouraged by it � it wouldn't influence me

PRODUCT-CATEGORY GLASS PLASTIC

JAM

COFFEE

COOK-IN SAUCE

ALCOPOP

www.wrap.org.uk/retail

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