Müller Milk & Ingredients to reduce product range in UK
As part of its cost-cutting efforts, Müller Milk & Ingredients (MMI) is set to simplify its range of fresh milk and cream products, in order to reduce plastic use and cut food waste and distribution costs.
By working collaboratively with customers to focus on popular SKUs, MMI’s Darwin project could see the company pare down the 835 fresh milk and cream SKUs manufactured across its network of six dairies by up to 40%.
Müller’s investment on in-house milk packaging capabilities, will enable to carry out lightweighting, removing 400 tonnes of plastic from its core fresh milk SKUs, while maintaining the integrity and quality of the packaging.
Patrick Müller, CEO of Müller Milk & Ingredients said: “At a typical dairy more than 90% of the milk we buy from farms is manufactured into less than 80 different product formats, meeting customer requirements for different milk types, pack sizes and labelling formats.
“At the same dairy, the remaining 10% of milk would be processed into a further 125 SKU formats, which is staggering. Typically this milk will be packed into smaller or unusual formats which tend to be far less efficient not only in terms of manufacturing, but through the whole supply chain.
“The environmental cost of persisting with some of these less common SKUs is significant, requiring our dairies to halt production whilst pack formats are changed for very small production runs, causing unacceptably high levels of product waste, energy use and complexity throughout our business.
“We are working closely with our customers who are fully aligned with the need to simplify and improve environmental and business performance and we are extremely encouraged by the response we’ve had.
“Fresh milk is a loved, iconic British tradition and its in 96% of the nation’s fridges. With Project Darwin we have an opportunity to reinvigorate the industry and we will do so by challenging established practices that have become the norm, benefitting the whole supply chain in the short, medium and long term.”
