British retailer relaunches Essential Waitrose brand

British retailer Waitrose is giving its most successful brand a big upgrade. The company is relaunching the brand, first introduced in 2009, which now will span more than 200 new and improved products across skin care, food and frozen — all of which will feature a modern package design. 

Besides being redesigned to better reflect the quality and value of the products, Waitrose said the Essential Waitrose rebrand included a review to ensure that all products fit within its plan to make all own brand packaging widely recyclable, reusable or home compostable by 2023. Overall, the brand’s packaging has been reduced by 15%. 

Among the packaging changes are Essential Olives, whose glass jars have been replaced with steel cans, saving 92 tons of glass packaging annually, and the removal of zip seals from Essential dried fruit bags, cutting out two tons of plastic every year. Other efforts include removing the plastic dust guard from Essential tissue boxes, implementing recycling packages for the brand’s range of frozen fruit and packaging Essential chilled breads in a new material. 

“For Essential Waitrose, we set ourselves the target of reducing packaging, including single-use plastic by 15% , which we are on track to do by September 2020,” said Karen Graley, Waitrose packaging manager. “We are really proud of this as it helps us move even closer to eliminate unnecessary plastic and make all own-brand packaging widely recycled, reusable or home-compostable by 2023.”

In addition to its sustainability focus, Essential Waitrose also includes a majority of produces that support a balanced diet, with a third of them signposted with the company’s “Good Health” logo. The logo guarantees a clear nutritional benefit, including vitamins, minerals and healthier fats. 

“Our Essential Waitrose range has been created by experts to exhibit the standout quality and value that Essential Waitrose products have to offer,” said Beth Elliot, Waitrose brand manager “Our aim is to offer the highest welfare, quality and value products which we know our customers expect. Supporting our farmers and suppliers remains a key priority and with the new design we hope our customers will be even more drawn to the range and the new products within it."