Notpla joins Bidfood Catering Supplies to make seaweed packaging available to 45,000 UK businesses

18 May 2023 --- Notpla has secured a listing with wholesale giant Bidfood Catering Supplies to make its seaweed-based takeaway food boxes available to over 45,000 catering and foodservice customers across the UK.

The collaboration supports Notpla’s ambition to reduce single-use plastics and provide bio-based solutions in their place. The company’s product range has been available to order via its wholesale platform to UK customers since early May.

Notpla takeaway food boxes are lined with Notpla Coating, the London-based firm’s “most industrially advanced product” made from seaweed. Bidfood is introducing six Notpla seaweed-coated packaging products to its catalog, designed on the most common shapes and sizes used in the takeaway food service industry.

Notpla’s packaging will allow Bidfood’s customers to substitute their plastic-lined packaging options with ease and meet consumers’ demand for transparency in what their packaging contains. The listing comes following the UK government’s announcement that it would be banning the supply of a range of single-use plastics in England from October this year, targeting the foodservice industry first.

Notpla’s collaboration with Bidfood Catering Supplies will broaden the use of seaweed alternatives in packaging throughout the UK.Notpla anticipates more listings and wider international distribution in 2023 to meet the demand for sustainable packaging from both consumers and the industry. The company has already proved in-market success through its long-term partnership with Just Eat Takeaway.

The collaboration expanded from a pilot of seaweed-coated packaging in three London restaurants in 2019 to adoption across eight European markets and over three million takeaway food boxes ordered by Just Eat restaurant partners.

Seaweed surge
Globally abundant and fast-growing, seaweed does not require fresh water or fertilizer and does not compete for arable land, unlike many land-based natural crops. Seaweed also reduces ocean acidification and effectively absorbs carbon, making it one of “the greatest weapons” against climate change in the food service industry, asserts Notpla.

In line with the EU Single-Use Plastic Directive, which aims to ban synthetic materials such as PLA, PHA and other bioplastics, Notpla Coating enables the packaging to be recycled without contamination in existing paper streams or thrown in a home compost.

Designed to disappear, Notpla Coating contains no plastic or “forever chemicals” such as PFAS, ensuring no harmful traces will be left behind in the environment.

Last year, Notpla was among the Earthshot Prize winners. “Thanks to the £1 million (US$1.2 million), we are going to invest in R&D, continue to expand our team of chemists and engineers, and invest in new machinery,” Pierre Paslier, Notpla’s co-founder and co-CEO, told PackagingInsights.

“But most importantly, the Earthshot Prize team is offering us tailored support and will introduce us to the Earthshot Prize’s vast network of businesses, philanthropists and investors, that should boost scaling our commercialization.”

Edited by Natalie Schwertheim

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