Nykøbing Mors, Denmark-headquartered Vilsund Blue, the nation's largest industrial producer of shellfish and seafood, has adopted new sustainable packaging for its products through a collaboration with London, U.K.-headquartered DS Smith.
The company will replace plastic pallets for canned products with corrugated cardboard ones as part of its work to eliminate its use of plastic and reduce its carbon emissions.
“DS Smith came up with some fantastic solutions to help make our packaging more sustainable and circular. We wanted to replace the plastic in our pallets, and DS Smith has helped us to develop a pure corrugated cardboard alternative," Vilsund Blue Production Manager Bent Svenningsen said. "We take immense pride in our commitment to quality, and the team of experts at DS Smith are helping us to realize some of our sustainability objectives.”
The company cooks, packages, and distributes 250 metric tons of fresh shellfish daily. Its new fiber-based packaging will increase the number of canned units on each individual pallet, increasing the capacity pallets can hold and, thus, the efficiency of product transportation. Pallets that previously held 1,800 cans are now able to hold 2,700 and can be stacked more efficiently in retail settings.
“Vilsund Blue set us a challenge to eliminate plastic materials from their pallets and to protect the products and assure and optimize a sustainability performance throughout the supply chain," DS Smith Technical Support Manager Martin Nielson said. "They produce mussels at scale, and we collaborated with Vilsund Blue’s machine suppliers to ensure that the packaging was fully aligned with their production processes. We have also significantly reduced CO2 emissions, and the product looks great on the shelf.”
Both companies have long made sustainability central commitments to their long-term strategies.
Vilsund Blue was the first mussel producer in the world to be Marine Stewardship Council (MSC)-certified, and the company aims to use every part of the mussels it processes.
DS Smith supports its fiber-based packaging solutions through recycling and papermaking operations and is an industry leader in the transition to circular packaging solutions. The company has grown from a London-based family box-making business, opened in the 1940s, to a global firm with operations in 34 countries and more than 30,000 employees.
