Premier Foods to look into attitudes to bread

Premier Foods is to study why shoppers are binning so much bread.

The Hovis manufacturer will team up with Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP) to research consumer behaviour and attitudes around buying, storage and usage habits. Findings will be used to develop a targeted approach to help reduce bread waste.

Neil Macfarlane, head of insight at Premier Foods, said: "We will gain a better understanding as to why UK consu-mers waste so much ’good food’ and then apply the learnings taken from this research to inform new ways of engaging consumers to encourage a reduction in food waste."

According to a WRAP study, bakery goods accounted for 14.1% of the £10bn cost to UK households of food wastage a total of 782,000 tonnes of wasted bakery products, of which 400,000 tonnes is bread.

"Reasons thought to be contributing to consumer bread waste are pack sizes being too large, the product staling or going mouldy as a result of incorrect storage and not being confident around free-zing bread," said a spokeswoman for WRAP. It follows news that sliced bread is the second most common product binned by Scottish households, according to WRAP Scotland, which said 20% of bread bought by consumers was wasted.

l In other news, Hovis has added a new Soft White Farmhouse loaf to its range, which it said is a domed, more traditional version of its Soft White variant. The packaging will feature the Soft White logo as well as a ’new’ flash on-pack. Hovis will be rolling out a £4.5m campaign to support its Soft White range including the new Farmhouse loaf.