NEW ZEALAND – Swiss food manufacturing giant Nestlé has announced a proposal to relocate confectionery production from its Wiri, New Zealand factory to a larger Allen’s factory in regional Victoria, Australia.
The company said the relocation of operations at the Wiri site which produces Allen’s chews lollies for sale in Australia would result in up to 45 redundancies.
Chris O’Donnell, confectionery general manager at Nestlé, said that the company regretted that the proposal will entail job losses at Wiri and that Nestlé would provide staff with a generous redundancy package and access to outplacement services.
“This doesn’t reflect on the personal efforts of our staff. It has been a commercial decision made after careful consideration of the benefits of simplifying and consolidating manufacture of our Australian lollies,” said O’Donnell.
However, Nestlé says the proposed changes do not affect the Wiri factory’s culinary manufacturing division.
The site will remain the regional hub for Maggi, producing culinary products under the Maggi and Nestlé Docello brands for retail and foodservice.
Sustainable packaging for confectionery
Meanwhile in the UK, Nestlé has redesigned its confectionery sharing bags to make them more sustainable, in an effort to cut down its carbon footprint.
According to the company, the new packaging made for use in the UK and Ireland Markets will use on average 15% less packaging.
The company estimates that in total, it will be able to take the equivalent of 331 lorries off UK roads every year, saving 71,472 road miles and 130 tonnes of CO2 emissions.”
The company said that from next month, brands including Milkybar, Aero Bubbles, Munchies, Rolo, Yorkie and Rowntree’s Randoms will be sold in new narrower pouches.
Nestlé expects the packaging changes to result in at least 83 tonnes of virgin plastic being taken out of its supply chain every year.
The company – which sells approximately 140 million confectionery sharing bags in the UK and Ireland every year – also claims that the move will save 130 tonnes of CO2 emissions annually.
Cheryl Allen, head of sustainability for Nestlé Confectionery, said: “Nestlé is working hard to reduce its use of virgin plastic by one-third by 2025. Removing 15% of the packaging from our sharing bags is an important step towards this goal.”
The company further notes that the move will not only save on the amount of virgin plastic we use each year, but also have significant benefits throughout our supply chain in the UK and Ireland.
For example, Nestlé says it can now pack more sharing bags at a time, which means fewer lorries are needed to transport them.
The company estimates that in total, it will be able to take the equivalent of 331 lorries off UK roads every year, saving 71,472 road miles and 130 tonnes of CO2 emissions.”
Nestlé also has a partnership in place with TerraCycle that aims to facilitate the recycling of plastic wrappers that are not currently collected at kerbside.
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