Can Tesco resurrect interest in scaled-up refill & reuse?

Reports of the death of in-store refill technology may have been greatly exaggerated.

As new research on the popularity of the technology among those few retailers that have pioneered it emerges, there are promising signs at last of the industry coming together to work out how it can be rolled out at scale.

Tesco has joined a panel with GoUnpackaged, the sustainable packaging consultancy that brought together the multi-retailer Refill Coalition, involving trials by Ocado and Aldi. The new panel is now mapping plans for refill to expand to cover 30% of all grocery sales.

But is this all yet more pie in the sky after many false dawns already for refill? Or can it finally crack the mainstream?

The Refill Coalition has been hit by a series of blows since it was formed in 2020, led by reuse consultants GoUnpackaged, with the withdrawal after initial support from retailers including Sainsbury’s, Morrisons, Lidl, M&S and Waitrose.

In February Aldi, the latest to join, revealed it was ending its in-store trial of banks of dispensers, where shoppers could fill their own containers as an alternative to single-use packaging. Without rollout on an industry-wide scale it was not economically viable to continue, it concluded.

Undeterred, the coalition this week revealed the results from its latest trials, with the discounter and online retailer Ocado the only major retailers still actively offering refills using its system.

Despite the series of pullouts it claims that the technology has proved it is a major hit with shoppers.

The Aldi trial, which used a reusable supply chain “vessel” equivalent to 24 single-use packs, fitted to a modular in-store refill fixture, saw customers fill their own containers over 16 months at its Solihull and Leamington Spa stores.

Ocado ran a trial from three customer fulfilment centres, covering 65% of its customer base, and continues to offer its current four reuse products to customers in returnable containers.

Strong demand

Independently verified research published this week shows demand was strong for both the in-store and online solutions, with share for in-store refills regularly reaching 30% and peaking at 56%, compared with single-use packaged alternatives. For online products in the Ocado trial, reuse products are selling at an average 16% sales share, reaching as high as 43% in some weeks, it found.

Coalition bosses say the project has “successfully demonstrated that circular concepts can excite and engage shoppers”.

But with its raft of withdrawals, along with the likes of Asda and Tesco ditching their high-profile trials of circular packaging tech because of the lack of “scalability”, the coalition admits proving the ability to scale across supermarket formats is crucial to it succeeding.

GoUnpackaged has brought together an industry panel including Ocado, Tesco, waste giant Biffa, WWF, Wrap and Defra. It has been modelling the logistics and infrastructure investment needed by retailers – as well as the support needed by government – to catapult reuse into the mainstream.

“This research aims to create a data-driven view of how to achieve 30% reusable packaging for UK grocery retail across different possible reuse scenarios,” says Catherine Conway, director & reuse lead at GoUnpackaged and member of DEFRA’s circular economy taskforce.

“Many organisations have identified 30% reuse as a starting target of what reuse at scale could look like. However, to achieve 30% reuse, the UK will need to develop collection, sortation and transport logistics, as well as washing and filling infrastructure, which currently does not exist at the necessary scale.

“In addition to achieving the desired environmental outcomes of reduced resource consumption, emissions and waste, we must also design reuse systems that run as close to cost parity as possible to single-use systems to avoid adding a significant cost burden to citizens.”

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Conway adds: “We’ve seen lots of trials carried out by various retailers and none of them seem to be scaling and we all know there are lots of reasons for that.

“We’ve now taken that challenge and [are] actually trying to see how much it might cost and what level of infrastructure we might need, to start creating the evidence industry needs so it can work together and so that government can do what it needs to do support industry in the transition to reuse.”

The Refill Coalition are not the only ones hoping refill can rise from the ashes of its many failed trials.

In November, The Grocer revealed supermarkets were gearing up to launch a second major push on reuse and refill technology as part of a Plastics Pact Mark II being drawn up by Wrap,

A report by the climate change body said there was a “clear appetite” across the industry to agree on new standardised principles for an “at scale” rollout, despite a series of recent setbacks.

The fact it is among those on the new panel suggest that the industry recognises working together as a sector is the only way refill technology will get off the ground.

“Scaling reuse and refill through system transformation will be a goal for the successor agreement to The UK Plastics Pact,” says Vikki Chesterman, programme lead in plastics & packaging at WRAP. “We are in the process of engaging with industry at this time and will announce the goals in October 2025.”

So there is hope after all for refills to return to the top of the industry agenda. Whether it makes it to the government’s list of priorities, amid so much geopolitical uncertainty and calls to reset the race to net zero, remains to be seen.