‘Innovative’ animal feed bag and Fiber Film pallet wrap introduced at Kiernan Milling

Peter Ahern, Sales Manager at NPP, and Garreth Carroll, Business Manager at Kiernan Milling in Longford discussing the steps to take to reduce the mill's carbon footprint. File Picture.

Flexible packaging supplier NPP has introduced an innovative animal feed bag and Fiber Film pallet wrap that has helped agricultural business Kiernan Milling reduce its carbon footprint by up to 63 tonnes per year.

The micron or thickness of the animal feed bags has now been reduced and 30% recyclable material has been integrated.

This new blend will help reduce carbon footprint by up to 55 tonnes annually.

NPP is currently trialling packaging using 40% recycled material with the aim of including as many recycled materials as possible without compromising the quality of the bags.

"Sustainability has been at the forefront of our business plans," Gareth Carroll, Business Manager Kiernan Milling, said.

"It was important that there was no impact on the quality of the feed bags which allowed us to continue business as normal.

"Since January of this year, we have started to use NPP's new fiber film pallet wrap, reducing our carbon footprint by an additional eight tons each year.

"It has also reduced the amount of wrap we are putting around the pallets by 43%".

Emissions

Meanwhile, the change to Fiber Film from regular pallet wrap is part of NPP's ‘Carbon Free Fiber Film Initiative’ offered in conjunction with Megaplast and Tree Nation.

As part of this initiative, trees will be planted to offset the CO2 emissions generated from the manufacturing and the use of fiber film.

Peter Ahern, Sales Manager NPP, added: "The CO2 emissions generated will be calculated and then Tree Nation will plant trees on behalf of our customer to offset the emissions.

"A certificate is then sent annually to the customer to show the number of trees planted and the amount of Co2 that has been offset.

"So as well as significantly reducing plastic usage, Fiber Film is now also carbon free."

"The average Irish household uses 4,200 kilowatts of electricity per annum, this is the equivalent of 1.36 tonnes of CO2.

The changes made by Kiernan Milling with the help of NPP are the equivalent of powering 46 houses per year.

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