M&S extends refillable grocery trial

Marks and Spencer (M&S) today announced the extension of its Fill Your Own trial to a second store.

The retailer said the trial, launched in its Hedge End Retail Park store in Southampton in mid-December, has seen an uptick in sales volume of 25 out of the 44 Fill Your Own products compared with the packaged alternatives.

M&S now plans to extend the trial to a second store in Manchester City Centre in March, before considering a wider roll-out plan for the future.

“Our Fill Your Own concept is one area we’re focusing on as part of our action to reduce plastic packaging and support our customers to reuse and recycle,” said Paul Willgoss, director of food technology at M&S.

“As a completely new way of shopping, we’re keen to better understand refill across the entire store process from behind the scenes operations to working together with our customers to encourage behaviour change.”

Several lines of packaging-free cupboard essentials including popular cereals, pasta, rice, lentils, confectionery, coffee, dried fruits and nut are on offer under the trial. M&S is also providing free, widely recyclable paper bags for customers without containers to help them adapt to the new concept.

The retailer added that customers are increasingly bringing in their own containers or purchasing one from M&S’ range, with sales of its reusable storage containers increasing by 38 percent at the Hedge End store since the trial launched and by 10 percent across all M&S stores compared to last year.