Reposit

A Reposit prefill offering and Return Station / Source: Reposit

AluminiumBeautyEuropeFood & BeverageGlassPackagingSteel

7 MINUTE READ

Emma Grace Bailey

WHAT WE SAY:

The indy-refill shop model isn’t working – requiring time, behaviour change and financial investment, local refill shops are ‘nice to have’ for some, but will never be used by most. Reposit is changing the conversation, bringing the concept of ‘prefill’ to the masses with its reusable packaging scheme that operates from within everyday supermarkets.

The brainchild of sustainable beauty brand Beauty Kitchen, Reposit is already appearing in both Asda and Marks & Spencer in the UK, and is set to be nationwide by 2023, working in collaboration with some of the world’s biggest home and personal care brands. As more businesses realise that their brand equity is no longer their ‘unique bottle’, we have no doubt that prefill is the future.

KEY FACTS:

Reposit is a UK-based, reusable packaging model designed by the founders of Beauty Kitchen, Jo-Anne and Stuart Chidley. Aimed at FMCG brands, Reposit is scaling up prefilled packaging solutions to allow consumers and brands to participate more easily in the circular economy.
Reposit offers packaging as a service, partnering with leading brands and retailers such as Unilever and Marks & Spencer (M&S) to sell everyday goods in reusable packaging that’s bought filled, used, returned, cleaned and refilled by brands to be sold again. The company has launched with personal care and home care, and is moving into the food market soon. It is responsible for the creation, collection and cleaning of packaging for brands and consumers.
A key component of the scheme is the packaging, which is created by Reposit and leased to brands, rather than bought. Packs are made from Glass, Aluminium, Steel and washable plastics, and come complete with a QR code that helps consumers, brands and Reposit keep track of each piece as it circulates. If the packs were to end up in the bin, they are easily recycled. The aim, however, is for them to be reused time and time again.
The consumer experience is elevated and simple. When shopping in a local supermarket, prefilled products are available to buy on the shelves among single-use alternatives. A consumer buys the prefilled pack of, for example, liquid detergent, paying a GBP 2 (USD 2.40) fee for the packaging at the point of purchase. Once the pack is empty, a consumer returns it at a Return Station, scanning the unique QR code before depositing. They are then refunded the GBP 2 (USD 2.40) packaging fee as either a physical or digital coupon in their accompanying Reposit app. This coupon can be exchanged for another product housed in Reposit packaging, meaning the consumer only pays for the contents of the bottle after the initial buy-in.
The packaging fee isn’t refunded in a bid to keep consumers within the system, and is what makes the Reposit system different to traditional deposit return schemes. The long term goal is to have Return Stations positioned at key touch points around towns and cities, from the supermarket to the train station and office complexes, making returns as convenient as possible.
At present, Reposit is working with Collect+ and Royal Mail to facilitate large scale collection, but it plans to have 5,000 return points in the UK by the end of 2022, and 50,000 by the end of 2023.
Brands already working with Reposit include Elemis, Unilever, Co-op, Asda, Tesco and M&S. The first M&S store to trial Re in 2022 – selling prefilled, home brand washing up liquid, fabric detergent and conditioner – had to restock its shelves twice in 36 hours, demonstrating the consumer desire for reusable packaging.
According to the company, initial trials across 19 supermarkets saw an 80% return/refill rate, and Reposit claims to have saved over four million single-use bottles from landfill to date.

Prefilled aluminium packaging from the Re programme / Source: Re

M&S refill station and prefilled bottles in collaboration with Re / Source: M&S

DIVE DEEPER:

According to Statista, 40% of all plastic is used for packaging. Considering that the average useful lifespan of a plastic bag is a mere 15 minutes, and most plastic packaging is used for minutes or – at best – days, it’s of no surprise that the average EU citizen produces 31 kilograms of plastic waste per year, equating to 15.8 million tonnes across the EU in 2018 alone.
The need for reusable packaging is getting more pressing by the day, and Smithers predicts that the refillable and reusable packaging market will experience a CAGR of 5% year-on-year, reaching a value of USD 3.5 billion by 2027.
To make reusable packaging part of our everyday life, however, a number of barriers need to be addressed, mainly consumer convenience, industry infrastructure and hygiene. Reposit tackles all three with a logical, convenient and inclusive strategy.
“We are all about democratising sustainability”, Jo Chidley told PlasticFree, and to be democratised, convenience must be prioritised throughout the reuse process, which is why the company opted to scale ‘prefill’ over ‘refill’. The former requires the least amount of consumer behaviour change, initially asking them to simply choose a filled, reusable bottle of product over a filled, single-use bottle. Refilling packs is both a messy and inconvenient strategy, requiring consumers to bring empty packs to store, refill them in front of strangers, and deal with the mess the process often creates. While Reposit does offer refill stations, prefill offers the exact same shopping experience we’re all accustomed to, especially as Reposit is dedicated to putting prefilled products into the country’s major supermarket chains.
However, prefill requires one significant behaviour change – the return of empty packaging, which is where many consumers opt out. Reposit is tackling this through the quick scaling of Return Stations in convenient locations, and through its dedicated Reposit app, which sends reminders to return empty packages at timed intervals after the point of purchase, highlighting nearby Return Stations to make the process as simple as possible.
The company is making it easy for brands to be involved too. Reposit's ‘product as a service’ business model means it not only produces the reusable packaging, but it’s also responsible for the manufacturing, upkeep and stationing of Return Stations, as well as the collection and cleaning of all packaging. This undertaking drastically reduces both the financial and time investment required by brands.
In fact, for a brand to join Reposit the costs are minimal. Leasing Reposit packaging is guaranteed to cost no more than 20% above the cost of buying a single-use plastic alternative, a cost that pays not only for the packaging but all the reverse logistics and cleaning services too. Another upfront cost is the packaging deposit, which is initially covered by the brand before being handed down to the retailer and then the consumer. If a brand is leasing 10,000 packaging units, for example, a deposit of GBP 20,000 (USD 24,200) is required, which is then recouped through consumer engagement.
One thing to be aware of is Reposit's universal approach to packaging design. While using steel, aluminium and glass gives the company design flexibility in terms of packaging shape and size, Re is limiting the variation in packaging types to help scale the solution more quickly, meaning brands potentially have to opt for the same pack as a competitor. The bigger a brand, the more flexibility there is, but all brands must use a leased Reposit pack.
From a hygiene perspective, Reposit’s decision to launch the system with personal care items is important. According to Jo, the personal care industry has some of the highest standards of cleanliness in the FMCG market, “to the point that a body wash bottle needs to be cleaner than a milk bottle.” By launching with personal care, Reposit has set up its cleaning infrastructure to be suitable for the most regulated of industries, allowing other products to scale more quickly.
Reposit was awarded a GBP 3 million (USD 3.6 million) grant as part of the Smart Sustainable Plastic Packaging Challenge from the UKRI in 2022, which will be used to scale the solution throughout the UK. Reposit aims to prevent at least 100 million bottles from ending up in landfill over the next three years.

“We are all about democratising sustainability.”

Jo Chidley – Founder, Beauty Kitchen & Reposit

Key Design Considerations:

Competitive advantage

Democratising sustainability involves the universal access to and involvement in circular systems such as Reposit, which is why the company isn’t granting exclusivity to brands, ensuring as many brands and retailers, and therefore as many consumers as possible can participate. This uniform approach reduces the opportunity for a brand to stand out from the crowd. One way to retain competitive advantage, however, is by becoming a Reposit founding partner, a scheme the company is approaching on a category by category basis. If a brand can offer Reposit its first million or billion demand signal in a particular product category, that brand will be first to market.

Encouraging behaviour change

While Reposit is tackling consumer behaviour change head-on, returning empty packs will always be a barrier to entry until the infrastructure is established nationwide. The company is scoping out a joint marketing campaign to tackle this hesitancy, powered by Reposit and participating brands and retailers. The idea is to pool everyone’s marketing budgets together, using it to promote the benefits of reuse on a mass scale, leading to a bigger ROI overall. When joining the Reposit revolution, be open to this new approach and the benefits that collaboration can bring.