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About our organisation

is a small, independent coffee roasting business, established in Sheffield in 2012. We source and roast high quality coffee, primarily aimed at the ‘home barista’ but also supplying a small number of mostly Sheffield-based coffee businesses.

The challenge

We wanted to redesign the packaging that we use within the business - coffee bags and retail boxes. As a business, we operate on a carbon neutral basis, and we also believe in reducing our impact on the environment as much as we can.

In the last few years, there have been new materials developed which may be able to help us in this respect but trawling through the available options and trying to verify the claims of manufacturers is a complex, and difficult task.

What we did

We worked with an intern, Jess - Jess’s task was to conduct research in the area of packaging materials. She was asked to assess each option in terms of things like recyclability, and the carbon profile of the manufacturing process. Not only that but we asked her to consider likely customer behaviour, ie how easy is it to dispose of each material responsibly and therefore how likely is that to happen?

Finally, we asked Jess to approach potential manufacturing partners and get detailed information about specifications, as well as estimated costs etc.

The result

Jess worked really hard and produced an excellent report for us. Her work was absolutely at the centre of our decision making and allowed us to proceed with confidence in the decisions that we made.

As a result, we feel that we have found the most sustainable packaging options available.

“As a small local business, schemes like this are a huge help. Of course, financial support is always very welcome, but it’s hard to overstate the value of being able to access talented people who are hard-working, motivated and passionate. Interns we have employed with the help of the university have played a key role in helping us to become carbon neutral, and also in developing innovative, sustainable packaging materials for use within our business. I would have no hesitation in accessing the program again in the future.”

Lee Newell

Foundry Coffee Roasters