Waitrose has relaunched its Cooks’ Ingredients range which will see a total of 458 products re-designed and re-labelled.
Beginning to roll out from this week, with products to be stocked across all Waitrose stores by mid-October, the range will see the addition of over 40 new items with some pre-existing items being delisted or re-tiered.
Adding to the range, the retailer is including new products inspired by flavours from Mexico, Japan and south east Asia and will introduce first-to-market own label products such as frozen wild garlic, fresh pork stock and Japanese seasoning Shio Koji.
“There are so many exciting and unexpected ways our new products can be used – you could try the truffle salt sprinkled on vanilla ice cream, the tajin seasoning sprinkled on fresh mango and the miso butter in chocolate brownies, to name a few,” Waitrose senior brand and innovation development chef, Zoe Simons said.
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Looking to remove and replace certain items within the range to reflect changing trends and habits, missing products will include some home baking ingredients and decorations, select frozen items and meal kits replaced with individual items.
The new packaging and labelling will also be printed with QR codes linking to online recipes and information.
This new range is said to reduce the retailer’s “plastic packaging weight by 41 tonnes,” according to Waitrose packaging development manager, Christina Capallaro.
Capallaro told The Grocer: “In line with our ambitions to reduce packaging across our products by a third by 2023, we’ve looked at what changes we could make across the new Cooks’ Ingredients range.
“Some examples include removing plastic components such as replacing plastic caps with metal ones; moving from plastic to paper labels on jars and bottles; using widely recyclable packaging for the new range of dried herbs and removing zips on frozen fruit packaging.
“We also have unpacked lines in the range, including root ginger, garlic and apples.”
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