In this issue

Welcome to the latest edition of Just Food’s digital magazine.

Packaging. Both crucial and controversial. Important for reasons of safety and convenience but under scrutiny for reasons of sustainability. 

What types of packaging should food manufacturers use? Plastic is bad. Ergo, anything else is good. It’s a message that’s gathered steam in recent years and is, let’s face it, quite seductive. But it’s more nuanced than that. Switching away from plastic isn’t straight-forward and doesn’t always have positive consequences. 

In this issue, we feature a couple of recent moves at Nestlé, which has revamped the packaging it uses for two of its flagship confectionery brands. 

We also look at the industry’s efforts on reusables, which, so far, have been pretty meagre to say the least, with more emphasis being placed on single-use packaging. 

And we dive deeper into food manufacturers’ packaging initiatives in the wider context of their work to tackle emissions. Will the ambitious climate commitments made by food companies see efforts to tackle packaging wane? 

Dean Best, managing editor