Page 19 - Packaging News Magazine Nov-Dec 2018

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By 2025, McCormick will reduce solid waste by
80%
and will use 100% recyclable, reusable or repurposable plastics
November-December 2018 www.packagingnews.com.au
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be FFP – frustration free packaging. Now, July 2019 is around the corner, so this is a rallying cry for the packaging industry and for FMCG companies that ship to Amazon or sell on their platform.
“And it’s not just Amazon, I believe Ali- baba and other e-commerce platforms are following suit.
“Another opportunity (and acronym) is SIOC – ship in own container – and this con- cept has not yet been fully grasped by the FMCG industry, and in fact the packaging in- dustry. (This involves designing the primary pack to function also as the shipping pack.)
“You really have to forget your legacy packaging system and design for the e-plat- form as well as physical store – regardless of what happens with e-commerce growth I do believe we are still going to have the physical store.”
He makes the point that all packaging should be designed for the so-called zero moment of truth (ZMOT), which has super- seded FMOT – the first moment of truth in marketing originally coined by Procter & Gamble in 2005.
“If you’re still designing for FMOT, you’re missing the boat,” he says.
“And what do I mean by ZMOT? It’s led by millennials, and wannabe millennials, who, when they want to buy something, re- search it online first. If the product doesn’t pop immediately – at ZMOT – in the digital world, chances are they’re not going to go venture into the physical world in search of it. But if it pops, the next step is to go to the physical store (or buy it online).”
He relates that McCormick has recently introduced a ZMOT package in UK market under its Schwartz brand. The new pack is designed for maximum impact in the digital world, with its unique, colour-coded closure – green for herbs, black for spices, and for
You really have to forget your legacy packaging system and design for the e-platform as well as the physical store.”
seasonings orange/ yellow – to increase shoppability across all retail channels.
“To me, that’s the future of design for packaging,” he says.
“We have also built in new functionality to enhance the consumer experience, a clo- sure that clicks when you open it to indi- cate freshness and clicks when you close it to tell you that you are sealing in freshness and that the product is safe and secure.”
Another of McCormick’s e-commerce- driven initiative involves revisiting pack sizes.
“The way we sell to regular stores is not going to work for e-commerce, so we have to look at the different pack sizes the con- sumer needs,” he says.
“You have to pay attention to those savvy younger consumers that have the potential to be your commercial ambassadors, be- cause they don’t cook or eat the same way as their parents, they like to explore, so our e-commerce traffic has to address that spirit of exploration. They want a variety of different herbs to trial, in small bottles, and they are creative with their cooking. These millennials have a sharing mindset and we have to try and make sure we really tap into that and use it to drive growth.
“Make no mistake about it, McCormick is a growth company. We are focused on driving growth – not at the expense of ef- ficiencies – we drive innovation for growth and productivity in tandem.”
AND WHAT OF SUSTAINABILITY?
Designing for performance fits neatly into McCormick’s sustainability strategy.
“We believe the future is all about the Circular Economy. Packaging and products have gone from ‘make use dispose’ to ‘make use reuse’. That’s the whole principle of the Circular Economy. What that means is that you have to think about your overall carbon footprint and how you minimise that.
“At McCormick, the framework we are adopting is called the McCormick 4: Re-
use, Reduce, Recycle and Renew. This framework is guiding everything we do. And that’s part of our Purpose-led Perfor- mance (PLP) approach, the idea of doing well by doing good,” he says.
“Wehavestated wewilldelivertoptierin- dustry performance while doing the right things for our people, our communities (in- cluding the farm communities) and our planet.
“The PLP we rolled out in November 2017, and for packaging specifically we said we are going to reduce our carbon footprint by 2025 by 25 per cent, and you know, that’s audacious, because we are not talking about just lightweighting, we’re talking about shipping, secondary packag- ing... everything that could potentially have an impact on the environment.
Okoroafor notes that five iconic spices – black pepper, red pepper, vanilla, oregano, and cinnamon – comprise a major portion of the company’s sales. By 2025 these will be 100 per cent sustainably sourced, with the rest of the range to follow suit.
“We are committing to reducing emis- sions by 20 per cent in our entire system by 2025. And we’re reducing solid waste by 80 per cent, so by 2025 less than 20 per cent of our waste will go into landfill. And just last month our chairman announced that we will be moving to 100 per cent recyclable, reusable or repurposable plastics by 2025.”
Audacious goals indeed. But who better equipped to drive the company to meet these goals, than Dr Michael Okoroafor? ■
Dr Michael Okoroafor is the opening key- note speaker at the upcoming AUSPACK 2019 Business and Industry Conference, taking place at the Melbourne Convention & Exhibition Centre on 26-27 March 2019.