Performance of frozen meal packaging system in the cold supply chain

Sammanfattning: Packaging helps to protect the product and safety handover the product from producer to end user. When the packaging leaves the closed loop it creates environmental issues. Also, the material focused packaging development process creates trade-off among supply chain actors. The sustainable packaging would reduce the overall cost and environmental impact, increase the value of the packed product in the whole system. The project is handled by company X and the company is interested in knowing the sustainable packaging for a frozen meal. The purpose of the project is to select two types of the frozen meal packaging system and to analyse their packaging performance in the supply chain, and to find out the important packaging features of the supply chain that need to be considered while developing a sustainable frozen meal packaging system. Two types of packaging, i.e. carton frozen meal packaging system and plastic frozen meal packaging system were selected and mapped in the supply chain from the producer level to consumer level. The detailed activity mapping was established for each actor in the supply chain to understand the different stages and ways of packaging handling. Fifteen packaging features were identified under four areas: product waste, logistics, value adding and packaging material. The data was collected through interviews, observations and survey. The collected data was interpreted and analysed in packaging scorecard and scatter plot. The plastic packaging system performed better with producer and the carton packaging system performed better with all other supply chain actors. The packaging features such as product protection and production efficiency were given the highest importance by the producer. Volume and weight efficiency, convenience and packaging waste were given the highest importance by other supply chain actors. The convenience and packaging waste were given the highest importance by consumers. Further, the top 5 important packaging features were identified for the supply chain actors and for consumers, and found that the product protection, circular economy and convenience are most important features for the whole supply chain and for the frozen meal packaging system. The result suggests the carton based sustainable packaging system could be developed for the frozen meal, due to better handling of packed product and packaging waste. The development process could be carried out in a holistic view by incorporation the supply chain actor’s requirements.