No paper straws have been made in Britain for the past several decades, but that is about to change as a group of packaging industry veterans prepare to open a dedicated paper straw production line in Ebbw Vale, Wales, making hundreds of millions of straws a year for McDonald’s and other food companies as they prepare for a ban on plastic straws.
“We spotted a huge opportunity and we went for it,” said Mark Varney, sales and marketing director of the newly created paper straw manufacturer Transcend Packaging. “When the BBC’s Blue Planet II was on the telly and the government started talking about the dangers of plastic straws, we saw a niche in the market.”
Varney and his business partners, all stalwarts of the packaging industry, watched as chains including Costa Coffee, Wetherspoons and Pizza Express announced plans to phase out plastic straws in favor of biodegradable paper.
“It is great that all these businesses are phasing out plastic straws, but the problem for them was where to get paper ones from,” Varney said. “Everyone is having to import them from China and when you look at the carbon footprint of that it kind of defeats the exercise.”
So Varney and his partners set about opening what they reckon will be the only paper straw production plant in Europe.
“We set up this company to give the the customers what they actually want: biodegradable paper straws made in the UK,” he said.
Transcend signed a deal last week to supply straws to 1,361 McDonald’s outlets from September.
The deal was agreed before Transcend had made its first straw as the company is waiting on delivery of machines from China.
McDonald’s uses 1.8 million straws a day in Britain.
The Northern Irish factory of Finnish packaging company Huhtamaki is also to supply McDonald’s, but is understood to not yet have paper straw production capabilities.
Varney said the McDonald’s deal was just the tip of the iceberg and the company is in talks with several other restaurant groups about supplying straws.
“Once a giant brand like McDonald’s says they are switching to paper, I suspect everyone else will follow,” he said.
McDonald’s UK and Ireland chief executive Paul Pomroy said the company’s decision to ditch plastic for paper was driven by its customers who “told us they wanted to see a move on straws, but to do so without compromising their overall experience when visiting our restaurant.”
Consumers have launched campaigns including The Last Straw, Straw Wars, Straws Suck and No Straw Please to encourage businesses to reduce the use of plastic straws.
The campaigns against straws gained momentum following the BBC’s Blue Planet II series which highlighted the danger plastic poses to marine life.
The program, which was the most watched British TV show of last year, featured a pilot whale calf which is thought to have died after consuming its mother’s milk contaminated with toxic chemicals from plastic.
“Unless the flow of plastics into the world’s oceans is reduced, marine life will be poisoned by them for many centuries to come,” said David Attenborough, narrator of the program.
A 2015 YouTube video of a turtle whose head was impaled by a plastic straw has been watched more than 27 million times.
A report by the World Economic Forum has estimated that by 2050 there could be more plastic in the ocean than fish.
Paper straws are more expensive than plastic, but Varney said the cost is very small compared with the public relations benefit to brands of being able to say they are making a real effort to reduce plastic waste.
Plastic straws cost about ￡0.10 per thousand, compared with ￡0.14 to ￡0.15 for paper alternatives.
“McDonald’s, bless them, understood the massive difference to the environment,” Varney said.
Transcend employs 20 people and plans to hire 200 by next year when the Ebbw Vale factory plans to be running at full capacity.
“We think we are going to need 20 machines to fulfill what we want to deliver into the marketplace,” Varney said.
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