Muller UK & Ireland unveils new recyclable lightweight milk cap

UK – The British dairy processor, Muller has rolled out a new lightweight recyclable milk cap that aims to reduce the company’s carbon footprint and the amount of plastic going into the environment.

According to the company, the cap utilizes 13% less plastic material thus removing 300 tonnes of plastic every year, the equivalent weight of 231 million ‘stealth’ milk caps.

The new lighter cap weighs 1.3g and will be used for all of Muller’s branded and private label fresh milk products beginning February this year.

Muller worked in collaboration with Paccor Ltd, a manufacturer of customized packaging and packaging solutions to design, trial and rollout the new compression mould caps.

“We’re clear about the need to reduce our use of plastic, and we have removed 10,000 tonnes of plastic from our milk bottles since 2016.

This is great progress, but we can, and we will do more,” said Patrick Müller, CEO of Müller Milk & Ingredients.

“Customers and consumers can be assured that Müller is working to lead in this and other important areas.

We are convinced that the work we do with our packaging, operational excellence and with dairy farmers who supply us to protect against market volatility, are real points of difference.”

Driving down own-plastic waste

The launch is part of Muller’s plans to do business sustainably while making profits and achieving efficiency and new capabilities in fresh milk, cream and flavored milk products.

The company which makes fresh milk, cream, butter and ingredients said its HDPE fresh milk bottles, used for all branded and private label fresh milk products, are already 100% recyclable and the business is aiming to increase the use of recycled plastic in its bottles to a target of 50% by 2020.

To scale down on the use of plastics, Muller last March unveiled plans to acquire plastic bottle manufacturing facilities in the UK in order to create its own fresh milk packaging.

The move, expected to be a multimillion-pound investment is expected to help the company reduce plastic usage and increase the use of recycled plastic in its bottles.