Pick n Pay is piloting a new packaging-free zone at its Constantia store in Cape Town. The zone includes 88 food products sourced directly from suppliers and delivered to the supermarket in bulk reusable containers. The trial is designed to assess customer uptake of packaging free purchasing and which product categories work best.
The new zone covers 15 dry grocery product categories including baking goods, cereals, coffee beans, dried fruit, flour, grains, nuts, oils, pasta, pulses and beans, rice, seeds, spices and superfoods. It comes on the back of a successful trial across 13 stores in July this year of Pick n Pay’s ‘nude’ fruit and vegetable produce wall concept. That trial included a range of premium vegetables such as portabellni mushrooms, cocktail tomatoes and sweet Palermo peppers.
That trial, which was eventually expanded out to 29 stores and from 12 loose vegetables to 24, measured consumer readiness. But it did not necessarily deliver a more sustainable outcome overall. This new pilot is designed to deliver measurably improved reduction in wastage and packaging use, and not just at the point of purchase.
The choice of a store in one of South Africa’s wealthiest, most sophisticated and food-oriented suburbs is no accident. Pick n Pay, like Shoprite, is keen to roll out more premium market-style concepts to take on Woolworths. In late November Shoprite opened its flagship, new look Checkers store in.. Constantia. That store features an artisanal coffee bar, sushi bar, in-store chocolatier, Brazilian-style grill and smoothie bar.
The concept of packaging free purchasing is a hot topic among modern supermarket retailers across Europe and the US. The irony, of course, is that it heralds a nostalgic return to the pre-supermarket, pre-plastics era when customers were expected to bring their own packaging.
The big question is how many stores Pick n Pay can introduce packaging free zones into; and the extent to which South African consumers care enough about the issue of packaging to deal with the inconvenience of having to bring their own containers to store. Packaging waste is recognised as a big issue within the South African grocery industry but there is a disconnect between how it is discussed at industry level and the extent to which consumers – and especially the many poor consumers who do most of their shopping in traditional channels – buy into the need for action.
