The Green Room

How one African company is thinking about the environment

By Luigi Ferrini on May 10, 2012 Leave a comment

African company Tiger Brands, a Massmart supplier, began using a biodegradable bag for all varieties of its Albany sliced bread in 2010. Massmart represents 14 to 18 percent of Tiger Brands’ business.

Last weekend, I spent nearly 24 hours on a plane, traveling almost 9,000 miles for a business trip to a country where I don’t do business.

Even though barely anyone in Arkansas knows my products, I’ve been waiting for my trip there for almost a year. Tiger Brands, where I’ve worked as customer executive (sales director) for the past three years, is the largest consumer packaged goods company in Africa, producing a number of popular food, beverage, personal care and home care brands. Since Walmart acquired Massmart in June of 2011, getting an understanding of how we can best work together was something we wanted to do very quickly. With that in mind, Walmart organized a summit for us and representatives of nine other African companies this week at their corporate headquarters in Bentonville, Ark.

South African warehouse club chain Makro is one of nine retailers operated by Massmart, a group of nine retailers in which Walmart acquired a majority stake in June 2011.

On Tuesday, we attended the Walmart and Sam’s Club Sustainable Packaging Expo, giving us insight into a number of innovations currently on the market. Because the majority of sustainable packaging efforts are about reducing waste, they’re often logical changes that make one ask, “Why didn’t anyone think of that before?” From my perspective, sustainability is all about those common-sense adjustments. Tiger Brands, like many companies, has a strong commitment to environmental responsibility. But as a business, it’s also important that we act on that commitment by using similar logic: What makes sense, not only for the environment, but also for our company and our consumers?

Tiger Brands has a team dedicated to finding such opportunities to innovate in all areas of our business, from packaging to processes. A great example is our Albany sliced bread bag, which, as a result of our efforts to monitor and measure packaging waste, we made biodegradable in 2010. Not only are we now sending no plastic to the landfill, but we have also reduced the size of the bag, allowing more bread to fit on shelves and trucks and therefore making restocking more efficient. In shrinking the bag, we simply tightened its fit around the loaf, eliminating 12 percent of our previous packaging and creating even further benefits: The bread now fits more compactly on shelves, it’s more aesthetically pleasing to our customers and doesn’t get damaged as often.

In Africa, cost is a major factor in shoppers’ buying decisions. So saving 12 percent in packaging is huge, because it means we can avoid passing along a price increase. Tiger Brands has other key projects that also benefit the environment and in essence, our customers: installing skylights and daylight harvesting sensors in our warehouses, burning maize husks and oat kernels to fuel our boilers, and harvesting rainwater and wastewater for non-production use. We’ve also replaced our hot water system with a hybrid solar and heat pump version and have installed intelligent motor controls on our factory equipment to reduce power use.

Before Tuesday’s packaging expo, we toured some Walmart stores and Sam’s Clubs. It was the first time for several members of our group to experience both establishments. Compared to stores in South Africa, the biggest difference I noticed was an increased amount of open space, as well as a clear willingness to try new things with product displays.

Trying new things is exactly why I’m here representing Tiger Brands. We’re very interested in what’s ahead and ways we can all work together. This week, I’ve gathered a lot of information to take home about Walmart and joint business planning, but in business – and sustainability – there’s always plenty more to be learned.