Nivea / Jerome Lerouge / head of packaging development

https://www.linkedin.com/in/j%C3%A9r%C3%B4me-lerouge-5b935715/

https://www.parispackagingweek.com/en/

https://www.nivea.com/

An amazing interview live from Paris Packaging Week with Mr. Jerome Lerouge from Nivea 

How can we lightweight to reduce material needed? 
How did Nivea reduce their paper usage dramatically with several easy steps? 
Is refillable a big part of the future? 

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https://www.linkedin.com/in/cory-connors/

I'm here to help you make your packaging more sustainable! Reach out today and I'll get back to you asap.

This podcast is an independent production and the podcast production is an original work of the author. All rights of ownership and reproduction are retained—copyright 2022.

Transcript

Cory Connors: 0:31

Welcome to Sustainable Packaging with Cory Connors. Today's guest is a special person from the world of sustainable packaging from Nivea . Okay. Would you mind introducing yourself, sir? Sure.

Jerome Lerouge: 0:42

So my name is Jerome Lerouge. Obviously you can see with my name that I'm French. It's a very French name. I'm currently the packaging director for the Nivea Brands. Mm-hmm.. And I'm located in Hamburg, in Germany because the Oh, you are not, In Paris. Okay. No, I'm not located in Paris.

Cory Connors: 0:56

Wonderful. Well, we're live here from Paris Packaging Week. The people at EZ Fair have set us up with this beautiful booth. Yes. And it's, it's been an honor to speak to amazing people like you. Can you tell us a little bit about your background? How did you get into to packaging?

Jerome Lerouge: 1:11

Yes, actually,, I had scientific studies I've always been interested in, in packaging and. Tangible things that you can really approach. Yeah. So actually I did one of the most famous packaging school in France. Oh. Which is the, was called EK at that time. Mm-hmm.. Mm-hmm.. I turned into now located in the house. So it's a very dedicated school of engineer focusing on packaging. That's

Cory Connors: 1:33

amazing. Yes. And, and at nea you're focusing mostly on beauty and health products. Is that,

Jerome Lerouge: 1:40

It's skincare. Skincare. It's skincare company. Yes. And we have also some personal care products. We're really focusing on skin and changing the life of our consumer so they feel good in their skin also. I love that.

Cory Connors: 1:51

Did you hear that changing the life of the consumer with, with your packaged products is an amazing thought?

Jerome Lerouge: 1:57

Yes. Yeah, and it's not limited only to nea. We also have brands like Derma, dermatological brands like Userin. Okay. Salt Europe in pharmacies. Oh, okay. The brand Aqua very famous in the us. Okay. He's also part of our. Oh,

Cory Connors: 2:12

okay. So is NEA the parent company then? Yes.

Jerome Lerouge: 2:16

Okay. Exactly. It's the, it's the biggest part of the right, of the business. Well,

Cory Connors: 2:20

so you're dealing with lots of different sustainability challenges. Mm-hmm., can you maybe speak to some of those, because what we're surrounded by here is 650 booths Yeah. Of packaging for exactly your product. Yes. Glass, steel, aluminum. Plastics some recyclables, some not. Some confusing , some confusing, some more. More challenging than most. Yes. Can you tell us a little bit about maybe some recent challenges or maybe a victory that you've had that where you're proud of? Sure.

Jerome Lerouge: 2:52

And the main topic, when we talk about brands like Nivea , which are master brands, and we're there for more than a hundred years on the market. Wow. We have Nivea men, Nivea , face care, face cleansing lab is also part of our portfolio. So we have a huge amount of formats, meaning also huge amount of materials that we have to deal with. And I'm not talking also of all the metal packaging that we have. Yes. And everybody knows our iconic ni Tim. I

Cory Connors: 3:19

was gonna say, that's what I'm used to seeing. Exactly. So

Jerome Lerouge: 3:22

the, the, the challenges are that there's not only one way to tackle sustainability. Yeah. I think if you talk to anyone on the, on the fair here, right. For sure. The, the first target, and I think where everybody was rushing into was integrating recycled material. Right. Higher pcr, higher pcr, more pcr, less consumer recycle, if you're listening. Yeah. Sometimes for, from a push from retailers who are saying, we're not retaining you, if you don't have 30% of. Recycle pt, for example. Really? I was at the very beginning. Wow. It happened in Germany or sometimes some countries being more advanced, like the UK saying, Hey, if you have styrene based packaging, you're out. Yeah. So one example is that we switched our labo sticks Good. From a starting based packaging Yes. To a mono material pp polypro. Oh, good. Good. So we have some of these changes happening. The, the second step is always weight reduction. Mm-hmm.. And I think here we are best in class in term of lightweighting of packaging. Good. You talked about some formats we are proud of. Yeah. We were launching for me it was a revolution in the world of packaging, the first rollable lightweight bottle.. And the bottle was so light that you could roll it up like a tube so you could really empty it. And it was, we divided by nearly. Of the weight of normal lotion bottles. Incredible. Wow. So it was a fantastic development. Challenging sometimes and here the balance, I think one of the most challenging time was. How you lightweight because we can always go lighter and lighter, but we still need to produce millions of this packagings. That's, so you need to find a yeah, kind of healthy balance between producible, but still being extra light.

Cory Connors: 5:06

Livia is such a big. Company such a big brand and, and you mentioned some of the other brands underneath. So we're not talking about several hundred units, we're talking about several hundred million units. Exactly. And so when you are taking out 5% of the weight, or, or like you said, 50% of the weight, this is a massive carbon footprint reduction. So good. This is, this is what makes interesting the job

Jerome Lerouge: 5:33

in packaging also is that we're such a, especially in these times of sustainability, yes. Such a central function because we convey a lot of information to our consumer through the packaging experience and the link we have with our marketing colleagues. But we need to be extremely close to our manufacturing and sourcing, for example, of recycled material, right? We need to discuss a lot more with our colleagues from, from procurement.

Cory Connors: 6:00

What are you seeing as far as that supply? Is it very challenging to get post-consumer recycled material to make your new packaging? Depends. Depends. It's probably the answer. Yes., Jerome Lerouge: I think getting Securing it. Yeah. And having fullback material. Ah. Because for sure when we produce millions of pieces, we cannot only re rely on one source. Right. So having different sources and then maybe different colors that you need to develop and having it plug and play whenever something happens, I think is the challenge. Finding pcr. We will find pcr. Right. That is. Being able to combine them, a consistent supply of post-consumer recycled material that you can turn into a consistent supply of high PCR content. Correct. Finished. Good. This is the challenge.

Jerome Lerouge: 6:49

And we also want to communicate to our clients, right? So for sure we link the amount of pc, our artworks, making it even more complex if we need to switch. Because you can't change, you can change if it's the same amount, but you know, it's it's

Cory Connors: 7:02

a whole complexity. I I can sympathize with you because that's the challenge and more and more people are dealing with that. Have you taken other steps like changing your secondary and tertiary packaging? Yeah. To make that lightweight or maybe reusable?

Jerome Lerouge: 7:18

We even skipped, so in some brands, like for example, everything that was not extremely needed, for example, leaflets. So we were sold in pharmacy, so the. The normal way of selling your product was in a folding box with a leaflet. Yep. And we skipped all our leaflet flats. Usually

Cory Connors: 7:35

folded up into origamis shape. Exactly. Yeah.. Jerome Lerouge: So we, we saved Wow. Good for you. And we were already FSC certified. That was the basics. We really checked that hundred percent hour portfolio. We had still some SKUs here and there a couple of years ago. Great. But it's, we tackled the paper topic already quite some time ago. Excellent. And we tried to skip, if you look at some tubes, like on our men brands, We will find face cleansers without any folding boxes. We try to really reduce the amount of, of paper we're we're using in general. Can it be accomplished sometimes with a QR code on the, on the bottle?

Jerome Lerouge: 8:13

We don't do that yet. Yeah, for sure. It's gonna come. I mean, the QR codes are coming, coming

Cory Connors: 8:18

time. It's an easy solution. Right, exactly.

Jerome Lerouge: 8:20

And you can use it for other purpose also if you want to act. Communication link to websites. So it's

Cory Connors: 8:25

it's come, you can build brand loyalty, like you said. Yeah. You can, you can bring them to your website. Exactly. You can sell them more of the line or a different line. And we,

Jerome Lerouge: 8:35

we actually used QR codes in very specific cases. Oh, good. This one is also very interesting as we're talking about sustainability. Yeah. We, we are trying to find different way of tackling sustainability. So we talked about lightweighting pcr. That's the basics. Yeah. But we also have some refill machines, for example, that we were Ah, wow. Installing in shops. So for sure it was not on a big scale, but for us it was really this experimental approach. Doing a partnership with one of our retailer. Great. So the biggest one in Germany is dm. Okay. Cause we have this kind of drug storage, it's called mm-hmm.. Mm-hmm.. Mm-hmm.. And we installed these machines where the consumer could take an empty bottle on the machine, fill it with one or the other shower product that we had. Great.. And here we use the QR code to be able to identify which product is used. Oh, okay. And the idea was that the consumer could use of the product Yeah. And come back with his own empty bottle and refill it for a second cycle or a third cycle. Oh, great.. Cory Connors: That is such sustainable packaging, I think. Yes. The refillable in-store, bring your bottle back, use it a hundred times. Exactly. It's so, so we use that, this case to also have findings about the size of containers. Yeah. Is it izing the product you have also on shelf? Because let's, let's about that. You'll have the transition. On shelf to refill. You cannot have everything at the same time.. Very true. Are we driving more traffic, for example, on shelf? Yeah, so it's we had a lot of of findings and also seeing if consumers were. Bringing back the product so we could just track if we had two, three loops. Okay. And also have a kind of, what kind of things were you, what

Cory Connors: 10:16

were you seeing? The, the consumers embracing

Jerome Lerouge: 10:19

it. Yes. Consumer embracing it. Not on a big, big scale. We can still see that. Sure. A lot of consumer asking for it, but not yet. Taking the challenge of bringing back your, your packaging and fill it in and

Cory Connors: 10:32

stuff. That's it. It's a challenge. It's a, it's a lifestyle change. Yes. And it's a consumer mindset shift that is gonna be slow. Yeah. I think. But I do the parallel,

Jerome Lerouge: 10:44

for example. Who would have told me, and I would not have believed it 15 years ago, that you will bring your own shopping bags when you get to the supermarket. I

Cory Connors: 10:53

mean, exactly. You remember,

Jerome Lerouge: 10:54

and now you're nervous when you forget. Everybody was having these, going to the shops, buying everything, going into plastic bags and going home without thinking about it. Yeah. And people were embracing the change, were forced to do it also in a way, and now it's

Cory Connors: 11:07

common practice. That is a great analogy and, and exact you know, situation. Are consumers ready to do this? I think they are. Mm-hmm., I think they're. They'll be early adopters. Yeah. You know, I mean, I know people that used to bring their grocery bags to the grocery store 20 years ago before it,

Jerome Lerouge: 11:26

you know, you always have front runners for early adopters. Right. So I think that, you know, when we look on the market right now, maybe we have 10% of our consumers ready to do that. Yes. I hope that the upcoming, for example, European regulations coming up on, on the packaging waste will also help to really have people get that in their normal habits.

Cory Connors: 11:49

Yes. Anything going on with NEA that you can announce or anything new that you're excited about

Jerome Lerouge: 11:57

speaking towards? Well, we have a lot of different launches happening. Yeah. One of the recent one was our shower gel bottle. Oh yeah. Our female shower gel bottle. We're here, we're reduced by 30%. Wow. The weight of our packaging. Congratulations. It's an extremely lightweight. We have a P version and a pt. Okay.

Cory Connors: 12:16

And we also p polypropylene.

Jerome Lerouge: 12:18

We have a polyethylene bottle. Oh, pe Okay. Exactly. And we have a pt. Okay. More complex formulations also. Wow. It was a, a hell of a development and we fixed something because we had these bottles for quite some time. Yeah. Now it's also a handstand so that we can have a better resting

Cory Connors: 12:36

of the bottle. So you're turning it up upside down. Exactly. And,

Jerome Lerouge: 12:39

and we also just received a certificate also on this products because for the, for the first time, we're using blue sorted pcr. Oh, which is not really the standards in the industry. So usually people use whites or gray P base and put master batch into it. We decided to go for a blue sorted PCR and develop the color accordingly, so that we foster more The circular economy of not, yeah, taking a whites, polluting it with blue and putting it again in the stream.

Cory Connors: 13:10

Are you able to find consistent blue?

Jerome Lerouge: 13:14

Depends what you understand by consistent. Cory Connors: So are you, are bit more of a a leniency there? We have to. Good. We I'd love to hear that. No, but we have to. This is a new reality. Yes. You know, when I talk to some colleagues, I

Cory Connors: 13:29

don't care what share shade of blue it is as a consumer. It

Jerome Lerouge: 13:32

depends. Yeah. Especially, I mean for us it's very, we need to be careful on

Cory Connors: 13:36

this one.. . Livia is the blue brand. Yeah, true. So we have very true our color. Iconic. Yeah.

Jerome Lerouge: 13:43

On the color of our logo on printed packaging, we cannot like mitigate on that. Right. Right. Maybe on our caps, the top of the flip top, we have to see something to bring more consistency. Yes. But at the end, PCR is pcr. We have to live with the changes. Yeah. Thinking that we will have a consistent color is thinking of the past. We need to move forward and adapt to that.

Cory Connors: 14:06

That's refreshing to hear that a large brand like yours is willing to waiver a little bit. Mm-hmm. and say, ah, it's okay. Our customers are loyal. They're gonna understand the logo's gonna be the same, it's gonna be the same color. The blue might be a one hue different each direction, and that'll be okay. But the

Jerome Lerouge: 14:26

streams are also developing a lot. So when we talk about differences, it's not like if we have a very gray blue and a very yellow, blue. There are differences. Sometimes you can notice that on shelves. Right. But it's not drastically different

Cory Connors: 14:39

at the end of the day. That's excellent. That's exciting. And thank you for that. I'm, I'm very happy to hear that. I know this sounds crazy, but I think it's so important. Anything that I didn't ask you that I, you wish I would've

Jerome Lerouge: 14:54

Well, maybe other areas of development that we're looking into. Yeah, please. Because it's quite interesting. We, we really try to gain experience on many different areas. Yeah. We looked a little bit, because right now we're still thinking about lotions in bottles, creams in jars, but maybe the future is more into concentrates. Yes. Maybe Yes. The formulation will change and we'll have to adapt our

Cory Connors: 15:15

packaging.

Jerome Lerouge: 15:16

I love that. I will, will we still kind of develop bottles for liquids? Yeah. Will we have solid formulations in the future? Right.

Cory Connors: 15:26

It's a formula. Be a new way of thinking. Yeah. Good. So, to,

Jerome Lerouge: 15:30

to try that, we first launched a baro for face cleansing Oh good. Where we only had a, a paper packaging around mm-hmm.. So really, Plastic free. It was, it's really working Well. Good. And we also experimented concentrates. So we did a partnership with one of our retailer in the uk. Great. And here it was about a hand wash where you had taps Yeah. That you just drop into water Yeah. To dissolve. And then you can use it for sure. It's, it's, we need to, to develop that. Nothing is perfect. People will complain, oh, it's still a plastic bottle. And so we need to have in between steps so that we can reach the end targets.

Cory Connors: 16:08

Right. But the, what they are not thinking about is the reduction of weight when shipping. Yes. You know, the, the, the fewer trucks on the road, the fewer containers on the ship. You know, these things are great steps forward. Yeah. So well done. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. I'd love to see some of that concentrate products. Maybe I'll make some tos about it or something.. Awesome.. Well, thank you so much. It's been an honor to meet you and thank you. Easy fares and Paris Packaging Week. Yes. It was a fantastic Paris

Jerome Lerouge: 16:41

this year. Yeah,

Cory Connors: 16:42

really. It was good. You've

Jerome Lerouge: 16:43

been before. Yes. So I'm, I'm part of the P c D jury now for Oh, wow. Four or five years. That's right. So I'm trying to come here every year if I'm not on a covid sick leave. Yes. Like last year, unfortunately. But no, it's good to see that everything is starting again. I think we, for the first day here, we really had a lot of people on the fair. Yes. It's still the major, I think it's one of the, if not the best packaging fair so far in Europe.

Cory Connors: 17:08

That's kudos to them. Yes. Tell us about a product that you judged that you were excited about.

Jerome Lerouge: 17:15

Some products. I love the one from my dear colleague from Unilever. This one. The material pump? Yeah. From Demo

Cory Connors: 17:20

Gik Dermatologic. I know Kevin Davis accepted an award yesterday for Exactly.

Jerome Lerouge: 17:25

So that was a partnership with apta. Very good. Yes. We actually have also very recyclable pumps. Oh, good.. Cory Connors: Well, but from a, from a perspective to tackle sustainability and e-commerce at the, at the same time is This is a very nice move. Well,

Cory Connors: 17:41

that's awesome. Thank you again, sir. Yes. Appreciate it.