Tennent’s to remove 100m+ plastic rings from packaging in shift from plastic to card
A £7 million investment in packaging equipment at Wellpark Brewery in Glasgow sees Tennent’s, Scotland’s favourite beer brand, well on its way to eradicating single use plastic from consumer packaging. The investment, first announced in October 2019 as part of a series of ‘Because Life is Bigger than Beer’ initiatives, will remove 150 tonnes of plastic from Tennent’s Lager can packs by 2022, including more than 100 million plastic (hi- and mid-cone) rings.
Work at Wellpark Brewery has commenced and is expected to complete in spring 2021, when the brewer will be able to produce up to 120,000 cans per hour, packaged in fully recyclable cardboard. Made possible by a multi-million-pound investment in plant machinery, the new packaging area will remove all plastic packaging from Tennent’s Lager can formats for the first time in more than 40 years.
Martin Doogan (pictured), Group Engineering Manager at C&C Group plc, Tennent’s parent company, said: “Sustainability is at the core of our business and we will always look for ways to innovate and minimise our impact on the environment to play our part in tackling the climate crisis. Today’s announcement is the latest step as we work towards our 2022 goal of eliminating single use plastic from our consumer packaging and our ongoing commitment to environmental best practice in everything we do.
“As part of our commitments around plastics, we continue to be the only brewer who is a member of the UK Plastics Pact, which guides our initiatives and sets stringent additional targets on plastic packaging, waste and recyclates.
“Together with our new carbon recapture facility and the anaerobic digestion plant, we are well on our way to achieving our pledge to make Wellpark net carbon zero.”
Terry A’Hearn, Chief Executive Officer at Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA), said: “Across the world, corporates, communities and consumers are clear on the need for urgent climate action. In Scotland, iconic brands like Tennent’s are transforming their business models to grasp this climate of opportunity and show bold leadership towards one planet prosperity.
“In addition to a series of sustainability investments at Wellpark Brewery, as Scotland’s Environment Protection Agency, we warmly welcome this latest boost to circularity as the eyes of the world will be on Glasgow at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26)”
Tennent’s ‘Because Life is Bigger than Beer’ commitments include the installation of an innovative carbon capture facility and an anaerobic digestion plant at Wellpark Brewery. The £2.6 million carbon capture facility is the biggest in Scotland, consisting of two 25-tonne tanks that allow the brewery to store over 4,200 tonnes of CO2 per year – the equivalent of 27,000 return flights from London to Glasgow. Since the facility was commissioned in November 2020, the brewery has already saved more than 600 tonnes of CO2.
Operational since October 2019, the anaerobic digestion plant allows for on-site treatment of wastewater generated by the brewing process. This improves the quality of wastewater discharged from Wellpark into the water treatment plant at Dalmarnock in Glasgow. The plant also generates bio-gas which provides around 5% of the energy used to heat the brewery rather than pulling energy from the national grid.
From a transport and logistics perspective, recent months have seen Tennent’s introduce 16 solar-assisted trucks into the delivery fleet. With solar panels on the roofs, the trucks use solar energy to power all on-board ancillary equipment, cutting fuel consumption by 5% and lowering CO2 emissions by four tonnes per vehicle annually.
