This month Young’s Seafood has started using a revolutionary new form of packaging for its salmon which it is estimated will reduce carbon emissions by around 78%.*

Young’s has historically received fresh salmon from suppliers in polystyrene boxes – handling around 1 million such boxes each year. Now, in partnership with a new firm in Grimsby, the company is piloting a ‘green’ alternative - called Cool Blue Box.

The Cool Blue Box is made from lightweight food grade polypropylene that can be sterilised at high temperature and so repeatedly re-used. It is cooled by a reservoir of food-safe gel in the lid which can be refrozen to at least -40°C. Because the method requires very little ice, there’s more room for more salmon in each box – which in turn means that up to 4 tonnes of extra fish can be transported in each 40ft lorry. Once emptied, the boxes are collected and returned to a local washing facility for sterilisation before re-use.

Young’s manufacturing controller, Tam Muldoon, has been managing the project. “Cool Blue has enormous environmental and quality benefits for us,” he explains. “It reduces carbon, eliminates waste and is better for the quality of the fish. Plus, because the boxes are micro chipped and can be scanned, we get more detailed traceability information with less paperwork.”

Cool Blue Box has invested £1.8million in the manufacture of 100,000 boxes so far. Managing director of the firm, Steve Moore, says, “We are absolutely delighted that Young’s has shown the vision to help us pioneer this project and make it a reality. Cool Blue Box has many advantages, but the biggest of these by far is the reduction in carbon emissions. Using the Carbon Trust’s methodology we have calculated this to be as much as a 78% reduction when compared with traditional polystyrene boxes.”

Mike Parker, deputy CEO of Young’s adds, “I am tremendously impressed with the potential of this project. It is a greener solution all round – and hopefully we’re witnessing the beginning of the end for the polystyrene fish box, which would be a massive environmental revolution for the whole seafood industry.”

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* This figure has been calculated in an independent analysis carried out by for Cool Blue Box by Robert Giddings BSc and William Davies BSc of the Grimsby Institute of Further and Higher Education, overseen by Professor Mike Dillon.