Asda extends refill offering

The supermarket will also be partnering with more household brands and engaging with customers in different parts of the UK to “understand how best to encourage refill participation among as many customers as possible”.

The additional refill stores will all featuring an increased range of new core products and partnerships with some of the UK’s most popular household brands including Yorkshire Tea, an increased range of Kellogg’s cereals, new own-label and Nestle cereals, Napolina pasta, and Tilda rice alongside new ‘prefilled’ trials of Radox and Persil.

The largest refill store to date will open in York in October, with 18 standalone bays featuring more than 70 branded and own-label products in refillable format, with new product types including dried Mars pet food such as Whiskas and Pedigree and additional ranges of snacking, desserts, and baking products.

A nine-bay standalone refill fixture in the Milton Keynes store will launch in December, featuring branded and own-label cereals, pasta, rice, tea, coffee, snacking, desserts, and baking products. The store will also sell refillable pet food, laundry, and toiletry products within specific aisles.

Asda’s first refill offer in Scotland, at the Glasgow Toryglen store, will launch in August featuring cereals, rice, pasta, tea, coffee, toiletry, and laundry products sold in specific aisles.

Branded and own-label tea, coffee, cereals, rice, pasta, laundry and toiletries launching in specific aisles at the Rugby store in August.

All four stores will feature Persil, Radox, Simple, and Alberto Balsam products from Unilever in stainless steel reusable bottles. These will be tested in two refill formats; refill on-the-go where shoppers can refill their bottle using a machine in-store and, in a global first for Unilever and Asda, return on-the-go where shoppers can pick up pre-filled bottles off the shelf and return them in-store once used.

Susan Thomas, director of commercial sustainability at Asda, said: “We know that reducing packaging waste matters to our customers and they have embraced the refill options available at the Middleton store, with many of the products available already exceeding expectations.

“Our ultimate goal is to make refill and reuse a part of every Asda shopping trip and to achieve this we have to make it easy, accessible and affordable for all our customers to shop this way. Middleton was a great introduction to how customers engage with refill products and we are now looking to accelerate these learnings by trialling different refill options in more stores to understand which aspects can potentially developed further.”

The rollout follows the successful launch of the Middleton refill zone in October, which saw several products outstripping packaged sales and many customers travelling from outside the local area to shop sustainably.

Jo Morley, head of campaigns at City to Sea, the organisation behind World Refill Day, said: “We know that the public are more concerned about plastic pollution than ever before, and looking for ways to live with less waste, so we welcome the news that Asda are going to be expanding their refill offering with the launch of four new refill stores.

“This World Refill Day, we’re encouraging people to make changes to their everyday shopping and find out what they can refill near them, and its brilliant to see Asda leading the way, making refill and reuse more accessible and more affordable.”