Mondelēz International is replacing rigid PET trays with FSC-certified paper trays across more than 115 cookie products in Europe as the food manufacturer moves a significant part of its bakery packaging away from virgin plastic.

The program covers eight brands including LU, Milka, Granola, Cadbury, Marabou, Chips Ahoy!, Lacta and Freia and reaches more than 25 European markets. Mondelēz says the affected portfolio represents roughly 28,000 tons of cookies produced annually and makes the project its largest single packaging sustainability initiative within the company’s European bakery category.

For manufacturers and packaging suppliers the most consequential figure is the material reduction rather than the number of brands involved. Mondelēz estimates the new format will remove approximately 2,200 tons of virgin plastic annually based on projected 2026 production volumes. The company calculates that this represents an approximately 80% reduction in plastic compared with the previous combination of an outer wrap and PET tray.

That scale makes the program more than a packaging redesign visible on supermarket shelves because changing the tray format across dozens of products and multiple manufacturing markets requires packaging engineering to work alongside procurement, production, logistics and quality control.

Replacing a tray can require changing much more than the material
Rigid PET has several characteristics that have made it useful for food manufacturers because it can provide structure, withstand industrial handling and protect products through production and distribution. Replacing it with paper therefore requires manufacturers to consider whether the new material can deliver comparable performance without causing problems elsewhere in the supply chain.

Mondelēz says the transition was completed across products sold in markets including the UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Poland, Spain and the Nordic countries. In the UK the paper trays will appear in products including Cadbury Crunchy Melts, Cadbury Chocolate Chip Cookie and LU Petit Cookie.

The change follows several packaging projects that show how the company’s material strategy has been moving through different stages rather than relying on a single substitute for virgin plastic.

Earlier in 2026 Mondelēz reported that trays containing approximately 80% recycled PET were being used across selected European brands including Milka, Oreo, Cadbury and Chips Ahoy!. The company said the switch to recycled PET was associated with an annual reduction of approximately 1,000 tons of virgin plastic across Europe.

A separate project with packaging producer Saica introduced mono-paper outer packaging for several LU biscuit multipacks in 2024. Mondelēz estimated that format reduced virgin plastic by approximately 63% per pack and was expected to save roughly 177 tons of virgin plastic during 2024 across France, Belgium and the UK.

Taken together these projects illustrate three different approaches available to large food manufacturers. A company can reduce the quantity of plastic used in a package, replace virgin resin with recycled material or redesign a packaging component around another material entirely.

The latest cookie tray project pushes further toward the third approach by removing rigid PET trays from a large group of products rather than increasing the recycled content within those trays.

European regulation is changing the packaging calculation
The timing comes as packaging decisions in Europe are becoming increasingly connected with regulatory requirements that extend well beyond corporate sustainability targets.

The EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation establishes requirements covering packaging reduction, recyclability and recycled content with provisions being introduced over several years. Among the requirements scheduled for 2030 is a minimum recycled-content level of 30% for contact-sensitive plastic packaging where PET is the major component subject to the regulation’s implementation provisions.

The regulation does not mean a food manufacturer must replace a PET cookie tray with paper and the Mondelēz project should not be characterized as a direct compliance response without evidence from the company. It does mean packaging teams increasingly have to evaluate material decisions against a regulatory framework in which the use of virgin plastic, recyclability and recycled content carry greater strategic significance.

That pressure changes how packaging investments are evaluated because a package is no longer simply a container chosen according to cost, appearance and product protection. Material availability, recycling infrastructure, manufacturing compatibility and future regulatory exposure are becoming part of the same commercial calculation.

Paper offers an established recycling stream across much of Europe although collection and processing systems differ between countries. European Paper Recycling Council data showed that 75.1% of paper and board consumed in Europe during 2024 was recycled with 53.4 million tons collected and recycled during the year.

For brands operating across multiple national markets that infrastructure can make fiber-based packaging attractive where technical performance allows plastic components to be removed.

The next packaging challenge is making material substitution scalable
The environmental case for moving away from virgin plastic still requires more scrutiny than simply comparing the names of two materials because paper is not automatically the lowest-impact solution for every packaging application.

FSC certification addresses the sourcing and chain of custody of forest-based materials but does not by itself establish the complete environmental impact of a package across manufacturing, transport, use and end-of-life treatment. Those questions depend on factors including material weight, coatings, production processes, transportation and the recycling systems available in each market.

The industrial significance of the Mondelēz project instead lies in the scale at which the company says it has made the substitution.

Moving more than 115 products across eight brands and more than 25 markets from rigid PET trays to paper requires a packaging format that can work within high-volume food manufacturing while continuing to protect products through distribution and retail.

For packaging executives this is where the project becomes more instructive than its consumer-facing sustainability message because material reduction has to survive the practical constraints of industrial production before it can generate meaningful volume savings.

Mondelēz’s recent projects suggest that the future of food packaging is unlikely to depend on one material replacing another across every application. The more probable direction is a mix of strategies in which manufacturers remove packaging where possible, increase recycled content where plastic remains technically useful and replace rigid plastic with fiber-based alternatives where production and product requirements allow the change to operate at scale.

Source:
Press Release
FSC United Kingdom