Berica Success Story

ABOUT GRANTLEA DOWNS SCHOOL

Grantlea Downs School is a co-educational state full primary school (Years 1-8) located in spacious and beautifully maintained grounds in Timaru, in the southern Canterbury region of the South Island.

It has a healthy roll of more than 330 students, and in 2005 merged with Seadown School due to the growth within the Timaru region. The school’s vision is: “Growing a community of learners”.

Grantlea Downs School prides itself on providing its students with an engaging and diverse curriculum. With the picturesque Taitarakihi Creek on its northern boundary, students have recently planted more than 200 natives in conjunction with ECAN and the Timaru District Council.

THE CHALLENGE

Ask most schoolchildren, and they’ll tell you that lunchtime is one of the highlights of the day. However, the hard-working team at Grantlea Downs School were dissatisfied with the standard of lunches provided by its external supplier.

The predecessor to the new Principal, Richard Kidd decided to explore different options for several reasons. Not only were the students not eating the food, there was enormous food and packaging waste. Serving and clean-up was time-consuming, and the local recycling facility was unable to down the packaging. This meant the packaging ended up in the school’s red rubbish bins, rather than its green composting bins.

Fiona Watson, Lunch Programme Team Leader, saw a Berica Facebook ad and enquired. Berica was delighted to step in.

THE SOLUTION

The school had a double challenge. It needed to make nutritious and tasty food to adhere to the Ministry of Health’s guidelines but also wanted a packaging solution that was easy to administer, and was decomposable.

The decision to make lunches in-house had an immediate effect on the whole school. Food waste was dramatically reduced thanks to the team’s delicious cooking and Berica’s NeverLeak collection of Meal Boxes were the perfect accompaniment to mealtimes – easy to use, safe, enjoyable for the students and simple to dispose of, without filling up landfills.

Children could also take home any unfinished lunches in the meal boxes and because the containers are microwavable and oven-proof the food could be reheated, eliminating food waste further.

The size of the containers made them easy to store, were able to hold just the right amount required for hungry tums and were the perfect size for the students to handle.

In the future, Grantlea Downs School would like to expand its composting facility to further reduce the recycling journey.

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THE BENEFITS

“[We’re] delighted with the packaging,” says Sandra Annett, Deputy Principal

“It was amazing what we can do with the packaging,” says Fiona Watson, Lunch Programme Team Leader.

The school calls the whole Berica experience extremely “positive”, meeting the needs of a school keen to improve the student dining experience and push towards a cleaner and greener local environment.

Students received their lunches warmer and fresher than before, the boxes are PFAS-free, avoiding seepage with a unique natural barrier coating that locks in the food’s nutritional value.

Packaging is home compostable-certified and recyclable if clean and because it’s microwave and oven friendly (from ambient, chilled or frozen) it’s highly versatile.

ABOUT BERICA

Presentation matters so when you're making beautiful food you need the packaging to match. At Berica, we provide elegant, sustainable packaging solutions that delight the eye and add value to your amazing food.

We’ve been providing high-quality, innovative packaging for over 25 years so we’ve seen it all! Whether it's packaging for cupcakes, cakes of all sizes, quiches, catering, and more we’ve got what you need. All of our materials are either recyclable or compostable so the options are endless when it comes to strong and sturdy packaging designs. And if you’re looking for something really unique our team can create custom packaging just for you.

We’re putting ‘box’ in out-of-the-box!