Success Story
U.S. retailers and restaurants pay approximately $50 million annually to dispose of roughly 1.47 million tons of wax boxes used to pack and ship cold and wet products.
Back in 2004, Mountaire Farms started to hear grumblings from customers who were growing tired of bearing the monetary and environmental costs associated with wax box disposal. Mountaire saw change coming and wanted to get ahead of the curve. They scoured the packaging industry in hopes of finding a recyclable, wax replacement box that would provide them with the level of performance that they required. They found that this just didn’t exist.
Realizing they needed an innovative packaging partner to develop the solution they sought, Mountaire found that partner in Interstate Container, now DS Smith. Greencoat is the result of this one-of- a-kind teamwork.
A recyclable box alone was not the ultimate goal: they needed a recyclable box that was just as strong and performed as well as wax. In 2010, Greencoat met those standards and was deemed a success. Mountaire was able to immediately transition the bulk of their poultry packaging to Greencoat boxes, with the remainder following closely behind.
Mountaire picked up new customers and increased our volume with existing customers since we switched to Greencoat. We know, because we’ve been told, that it’s because of our boxes.
Today, Mountaire sends its products around the world – from Africa to the Middle East to Asia – in Greencoat, and the boxes don’t fail. Both Mountaire and its customers find Greencoat’s performance to be superior to anything else in the corrugated world.
Many of Mountaire’s major customers now demand their product be delivered in recyclable packaging. Those early grumblings from retail and restaurant customers about the monetary and environmental costs associated with wax disposal have turned into full-fledged Sustainability Departments with rigid vendor requirements. Thanks to Greencoat, Mountaire can now meet those sustainability requirements.
