TIGER BRANDS

CORPORATE POSITION ON PLASTICS

As Southern Africa’s largest producer of branded quality consumer goods, Tiger Brands is committed to safeguarding the future of our planet through carefully considering our environmental footprint and taking deliberate and concerted action to minimise negative effects. Our intent, focus areas, targets and actions are formulated and implemented as part of our group sustainability strategy. Through responsible stewardship of our natural resources, we aim to manage our environmental impact across each product’s full life cycle.

Product packaging is integral to the manufacturing and distribution of our products, and is an important consideration for preserving the nutrition, safety and quality of the food and other products we make. As part of our packaging profile, plastics help us to deliver and sustain product safety and convenience for many of our products. The product to package ratio of plastic, means that we can pack more product using less packaging. Plastics are light in weight and this makes them very cost effective to transport, resulting in better carbon footprint compared to other packaging formats like glass, and as such, helps us deliver another value proposition to our consumers - affordability.

We however recognise that plastics also present challenges in terms of the raw materials used in production as well as the waste generated when improper disposal occurs. We share the global concerns about the effects of plastic packaging on the environment, especially the accumulation of ocean plastic waste and associated threats to marine life, driven largely by single-use plastics.

Tiger Brands is proud to be a founding member of the South African Plastics Pact. The SA Plastic Pact aims to transform the country’s plastic packaging sector by 2025 through achieving targets such as taking action on problematic or unnecessary plastic packaging through redesign, innovation or alternative delivery models. As a result, we have embraced innovation to respond to the plastic challenge.

OUR AMBITION

100% of our packaging to be recyclable by design by 2030.

OUR COMMITMENT:

1. Use of reusable, recyclable or compostable plastic packaging across our portfolio as far as possible.
2. Invest in innovation to address the problems of plastic as part of involvement in the “war on plastic pollution” initiative with the Consumer Goods Council of SA.
3. Ensure that all our unnecessary and problematic single-use plastics are fully recyclable or compostable by 2025.
4. Partner with relevant role players and structures for re-purposing single-use plastics (this includes necessary multi-layer plastics) in the short term with the view toward environmental and marine conservation.
5. Support consumer education and awareness through our Brands with a view toward responsible waste management.

OUR ACTIONS TO DATE

• Identified problematic and unnecessary single-use plastics across our portfolio and have crafted solutions based on their functionality and necessity: for small packs single use plastics, we have identified biodegradable and compostable solutions;
• Migrated majority of our Beverages, Home and Personal Care products to reusable and recyclable plastic packaging;
• Light- weighting of plastic containers: since 2018 we light-weighted our Oros 2L bottles saving 197 tons of plastic as a result. This is equivalent to 32 fully grown African elephants;
• Adopted an on-pack recycling labelling standard practice, which easily informs consumers of what is recyclable and what is not; and
• Ensuring our operations strictly adhere to all environmental regulations.

As a company who embraces its role and responsibility toward the environment, we will continue to play a leading role through our participation in relevant forums and initiatives that promote better utilisation our of natural resources, and to demonstrate this commitment through our innovations and actions.