Iceland Foods is a major British supermarket chain headquartered in Deeside, Wales, specialising in frozen food and groceries. Founded in 1970, Iceland operates more than 960 stores across the UK under its Iceland and The Food Warehouse brands. The company has been a pioneer in retail sustainability, making headlines with its initiatives to reduce single-use plastics across its portfolio. This reputation is built on a commitment to quality and convenience while responding to consumer expectations around environmental responsibility.
Before its collaboration with packaging supplier Parkside and seafood supplier, Northcoast, Iceland packed its range of frozen seafood in low-density polyethylene (LDPE) packs. However, as part of its mission to minimise plastic in its packaging, it wanted to transition to a robust paper-based alternative. The challenge lay in ensuring the pack could withstand freezer conditions while maintaining functionality and shelf life, but in achieving it, Parkside and Iceland have created a successful innovation that sets the standard for plastic reduction in the frozen food retail sector.
The challenge
Plastic has multiple qualities that make it well-suited for packaging frozen food, and this means that replacing it with paper requires an innovative approach to design.
The most obvious challenge of using paper for frozen food is its poor moisture resistance. Freezers are an environment where a pack will be exposed to moisture, a problem that becomes even more significant if the pack begins to thaw. Paper’s inherently porous nature means that moisture and other substances can easily migrate through it, potentially contaminating its contents or leading to issues like freezer burn.
This challenge has historically been overcome by combining paper with multilayer solutions, which possess the required barrier properties to protect against moisture, oxygen, grease and oils, or aromas. However, introducing additional materials into a pack has drawbacks in terms of recyclability because the paper and barrier layer cannot be recycled together. Manual separation is sometimes possible but adds cost and complexity, making recycling less efficient.
Sealing strength presented another significant challenge. Food packaging requires strong seals to prevent leaks and contamination, and paper-based materials can struggle to achieve this strength due to their porous, fibrous structure, which makes them less responsive than plastic films to conventional heat-sealing techniques. Meeting these technical demands required Parkside to draw deeply on its innovation expertise and work closely with Iceland to develop an optimal solution.
The Parkside solution
After extensive development and testing, Parkside and Iceland settled on a fully recyclable paper pouch finished with a specially formulated water-based barrier coating. This coating is key to protecting the paper from freezer conditions by preventing ice crystal formation on the pack’s surface, while providing grease, moisture, and oxygen barriers suitable for a variety of frozen products beyond seafood.
This new packaging provides a fully recyclable alternative to traditional polyethylene bags, allowing the packs to be recycled through standard UK kerbside paper collection schemes. The innovative design removes the need for extruded or laminated plastic layers such as polyethylene, meaning it fully breaks down during the paper recycling process, supporting Iceland’s ambitious plastic reduction targets.
The pack also offers reliable heat seal functionality, which is critical for maintaining product integrity during storage and transportation. Parkside dedicated significant effort to fine-tuning the packaging design and repro files to ensure that the new paper pack matched the seal performance and visual quality of the original polyethylene bags.
The results
The recyclable paper pouch developed by Parkside for Iceland’s seafood range represents a true industry-first: one of the world’s pioneering fully recyclable paper flexible packaging solutions specifically engineered for frozen food. This pack was a major milestone for Iceland in its mission to take plastic out of its food packaging. Crucially, it delivered optimum performance both in terms of product protection and end-of-life circularity, fitting seamlessly into the company’s ethos and demonstrating how the right packaging can play an active role in the development of innovative ESG strategies.
Award-winning innovation
Recognition of the solution’s cutting-edge design and performance came with the prestigious Stationers’ Company Innovation Excellence Award in the Product Design category. This accolade underscores the significant impact of the recyclable paper pack and the advanced Recoflex™ paper material, which combines barrier functionality with recyclability. The pack also won the Technical Innovation, Printer category at the FIA UK Awards, and was recognised in both the Environmental Packaging Awards and The Grocer New Product & Packaging Awards.
The environmental benefits of this redesign have substantial potential. The switch reduces plastic usage significantly, aligns the packaging with existing paper recycling infrastructure, and delivers a material solution that breaks down efficiently during recycling. Operationally, the new pack maintains product protection and shelf life comparable to conventional polyethylene bags, ensuring a seamless transition that meets both retailer and consumer expectations.
The last word
“Partnering with Parkside has enabled us to pioneer plastic-free packaging solutions that don’t compromise on quality or functionality. This project proved that with innovation and close collaboration, it is possible to meet consumer demand for sustainable packaging while maintaining performance in challenging frozen food conditions.”
– Mark Armstrong, Packaging Specialist at Iceland
