PACKAGING WITH PURPOSE

If you’re a longtime BBF fan, you’ll know that in April 2023 we rolled out a new cardboard box in response to customer feedback: our delicious beers needed higher protection from the busy nationwide delivery drivers. We trialled and then introduced a larger, sturdier box with can dividers, designed and produced by a local company. And they’ve been great – a recent Brewser shipment reported only 1 case out of nearly 800 cases was damaged – their usual rate is 1 in 50.

But since our first impact report in 2024, we’ve been looking at ways we can reduce our impact. Although home deliveries are already 100% free of plastic packaging, brewing and home deliveries are two industries that are inherently full of unsustainable practices.

With our new sustainably focussed brewery in production (tours are available from April 29th this year) we’ve widened the scope to look at ways we can improve beyond beer. That’s where cardboard comes into play, and the man with a plan is Production Manager, Paul.

Ecommerce manager Kezia tasked Paul with finding an equally protective cardboard box with a lighter print on the planet. A tall order? Yes. But if anyone knows the cardboard game, it’s him.

So, Paul, how much less cardboard is in these new boxes? 
“An old shipping box weighs 530g and a new one weighs 274g. Let’s just call that a saving of 250g per box. It’s half the cardboard.”

What does that mean, in terms of the bigger picture?
“4 boxes would be 1kg of cardboard saved. We use on average 150 shipping boxes per week.
So, an average weekly saving of around 37.5 Kg or 1.875 tonnes per year. We’ve got some exciting beers coming out in can this year, I wouldn’t be surprised if we hit 2 tonnes!”

That’s a LOT of cardboard! How come it’s so much?
“The old boxes were bigger and had a separate divider to the main outer box. These have a built-in divider and are more compact.”

Are there any other benefits this new style of box?
“They’re much quicker to build on the canning and packing line. It’s probably only a few seconds per box, which doesn’t sound that impressive, but it adds up when making up 100 at a time.
They are also cost effective – saving on the packaging is more money we can put into ingredients, it helps us keep the price accessible to customers when costs are rising across the board, and it allows us to give back to Bristol!” 

You mentioned the box is smaller. It’s still the same amount of beer inside, right?
“Yes, of course! Less beers would be called shrinkage – a naughty tactic by big manufacturers to make customers think the prices aren’t going up. We would never try to pull that sort of thing off.
We still do 12 packs as standard – as well as offering 4 packs – but they’re just sat a little cosier inside the box. The reduced wriggle room helps prevent dents, and it’s a space saver for us; we get almost double the number of cases on a pallet as we did previously.”

Why is space saving a good thing? Don’t you have massive warehouses?
“Space saving is impressive because our limited amount of temperature-controlled storage takes energy to run, but is vital for keeping beers tasting brewery fresh. We’ve essentially doubled our capacity, meaning we can make more beer! The more beer we brew, the more we can give back to Bristol through our Brewed to Give initiative.
Space saving is also helpful for deliveries. Smaller cases = more cases on one truck. We have technically halved the amount of truck deliveries per year. Less trucks, less CO2 emissions!”