Would You Like Plastic Free Packaging With That?

The South Island’s largest mobile food vendor switches to paper packaging

A Fully Biodegradable Coffee Cup Lifecycle

When the South Island’s largest mobile food vendor wanted to go plastic-free with its product packaging they came to Ashbec for solutions. The Food Den operates six large mobile food stalls throughout the Mainland.

Large, brightly coloured caravans offer a tempting array of hot foods such as burgers, hot dogs, hot chips, bacon butties and Lil ‘Orbit doughnuts. The kind of oasis that beckons to you when attending a concert or festival, sports event or carnival.


Serving crowds from 500 to 100,000 people. The Food Den owner, Dennis McGrath despaired however at the volume of plastic packaging leftover from his trading and wanted to eliminate plastics from his packaging process altogether.


In fact, he wanted to have more control of the entire life cycle of his packaging and have it 100% paper-based and preferably compostable.

He approached Ashbec Trading Ltd to seek plastic-free packaging for all his products. Entirely plastics free, which meant no PET (oil-based) plastics, no PLA (plant-based) plastics, no synthetic-based plastic linings, no plastic cups or straws. Only 100% compostable paper products.


The Ashbec team re-designed and branded all his packaging to be paper-based and had samples made at the Glopac factory.

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“Our paper-based designs turned out to be a good fit for him. He can collect them up and recycle them at his local transfer station or his own composting and worm farm facility. Dennis has been a huge advocate for paper-based packaging and we’ve been supplying him for a long time.”

— Ashbec Director, Chris Thompson

We now have a plastic free product, that meets our needs and the requirements of composting facilities!

"With respect to a packaging supplier we, The Food Den have had a 8 year relationship with Ashbec Trading. When it comes to plastic lined packaging we have experienced a shift in both ours and public opinion as to what is good for the business, public perception and the environment." says Dennis

"This has seen us shift from using products such as plastic, Polystyrene and PET/PLA lined.

Our requirements were simple.

  1. We needed a compliant, compostable everywhere, plastic free board  that covers both Hot & Cold foods and drinks.
  2. It had to be able to used for different custom packaging needs," he explains

"We have spoken with other packaging suppliers but are yet to find one that has a compliant, plastic free product that can be composted in ANY composting facility. The best they have offered is PLA Plastic lined product that requires a commercial composting facility which are roundly rejected by most composting facilities here in New Zealand."

— Dennis McGrath, Director for The Food Den

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