Veuve Clicquot Switches to Virgin Tree-Free Paper

from Packaging World July 2023

INSPECTION & TESTING EQUIPMENT

Luxury champagne producer engineers a gift box made from hemp and recycled wood fiber that reduces its eco-footprint while supporting NGO Canopy Planet’s initiative to protect ancient and endangered forests.

By Anne Marie Mohan, Senior Editor

For many brands today, transitioning from plastic to paper packaging has helped them move closer to achieving corporate sustainability goals that center on decreasing their use of plastic and reducing the carbon footprint of their packaging. But what if your packaging is already made from paper? How can you make this renewable and recyclable material even more eco-friendly? For France-based luxury champagne brand Veuve Clicquot, the answer lay in switching to a virgin forest-free gift box, with half of the materials sourced from the local Champagne region.

Veuve Clicquot is no stranger to packaging innovation. In 2011, the brand introduced a gift box made of potato starch, and in 2014, it launched one made from its own post-harvest grape waste (see pwgo.to/7966). Says Carole Bildé, chief marketing and communications of cer of Maison Veuve Clicquot, innovation is embedded in the brand’s DNA and has become an even more important part of its packaging strategy in recent years.

“In 2019, we launched our EcoYellow internal program, leveraging our leadership in innovative packaging to identify and scale-up nextgeneration solutions,” Bildé says.

Following two years of R&D, in summer 2022, Veuve Clicquot replaced its existing 100% virgin ber paper and paperboard gift box with one made from 50% recycled paper and 50% hemp—a virgin tree-free solution that is also 12% lighter than the previous packaging.

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Canopy Pack4Good Partners Set Ambitious Goals

For more than 20 years, NGO Canopy Planet has worked collaboratively with more than 900 brand partners and innovators, primarily in the fashion, printing, and packaging industries, to transform unsustainable supply chains, catalyze innovation, and keep vital forests standing all over the world. According to the organization, “scientists have urged greater conservation and restoration of forests as vital components in addressing the climate and biodiversity crisis.”

In 2019, Canopy launched its Pack4Good initiative to transform the paper packaging industry to reduce and eliminate its impact on the world’s high-carbon, high-biodiversity forests. The program has grown significantly since 2019, now boasting 389 members. These Pack4Good partners have committed to ensuring that all of their packaging is free of ancient and endangered forests, designed to reduce material use, maximizes recycled and alternative Next Gen fibers, and uses FSC (Forest Stewardship Council)-certified wood when virgin forest fiber continues to be used.

According to Canopy Campaigns Director Tamara Stark, the

NGO works collaboratively with each of its brand partners to switch to preferred supplies and overcome hurdles to ensure they can meet the ambitious targets they set. Among the tools and resources Canopy provides its partners are the following:

• A matrix to assess where their current fiber supply is coming from

• Letter templates that can be adapted and shared with their suppliers to help them understand Pack4Good

• A supplier questionnaire that makes it easy for the brand’s suppliers to review their own supply chain and fiber content