An M&S-backed reusable packaging initiative billed as “game-changing” has fallen months behind schedule on its projected launch date.
The project had been due to launch with multiple retailers and brands by June this year, using pre-filled containers which consumers would be able to return to stores. The initiative is powered by reusable packaging platform Reposit, which is enabling a pilot of cleaning and laundry products in pre-filled containers in 25 M&S stores, and has also worked with Asda and Co-op on pilots.
Last year, Reposit invited others to get onboard for a wider collaborative rollout, with retailers and brands given until the end of October to sign up for the June launch.
However, the anticipated launch date was later pushed back until September 2024 – with that also now looking uncertain.
The project is now understood to be still waiting for retailers to be ready to go public with a new timeframe.
Reposit’s aim is to create a path to scale by using standardised containers that can be shared among retailers and brands, in a “buy anywhere, return anywhere” model for consumers.
The uncertainty over when it will launch is the latest in a series of setbacks to industry efforts to create a viable packaging-free model, most recently with Asda canning a flagship four-store pilot of dispensers and reusable containers. The Grocer revealed last month that the project – which involved big-name brands such as PG Tips, Vimto, Kellogg’s, Radox and Persil – had suffered from a lack of consumer demand, attracting combined sales across the four trial stores as low as £1,000 a week.
Separately, a bulk home delivery refill solution that was expected to go live on Ocado early this year also remains in the pipeline, though a launch is expected soon.
Commenting as the company announced its half-year results in July, Ocado Retail CEO Hannah Gibson told The Grocer it was “still in development” but to “keep an eye out”.
“It’s obviously going to be quite different to what others have done in the market, so it will be interesting to see how it resonates with customers,” she added. “We’re doing it to learn.”
It is the result of the online supermarket’s work with the Refill Coalition, another industry collaboration, which has been in development for more than two years and which – like Reposit – aims to use standardised containers as a route to scale.
The first in-store version of the Refill Coalition’s solution, involving a bank of dispensers for dry goods such as pasta and cereal, was launched by Aldi in its Solihull store in October last year. Aldi said in February that a small number of other stores would join the pilot in the next six months, though only Leamington Spa has so far been added.
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