Unilever’s reworked ice cream recipes can now stay frozen at lower temperatures, helping to lower freezer emissions. Now, it’s sharing 12 reformulation patents for the industry to follow suit.
Last year, Unilever — whose ice
cream brands include Magnum and Wall’s — announced its
ambition
to increase the temperature of its last-mile ice cream freezer cabinets while
ensuring the same ice cream quality and consumer experience. Since then,
research conducted at
Colworth — Unilever’s
Global Ice Cream R&D Centre — and two pilots in Germany have confirmed an
energy reduction of around 25 percent per freezer cabinet at the warmer
temperature of -12°C, which is better for the environment and means the freezers
are cheaper to run.
Access to these patents will help the industry reformulate ice cream products
that remain stable at the warmer freezer temperature of -12°C, rather than the
current industry standard of -18°C. It is hoped that by sharing these patents
with other ice cream manufacturers, the industry will be able to move towards
more energy-efficient freezer cabinets across the globe.
“We’re pleased to take this next step in our work to increase the temperature of
our last-mile ice cream freezer cabinets,” said Andy
Sztehlo, Chief R&D Officer Ice
Cream at Unilever. “By granting a free, non-exclusive license to these 12
reformulation patents, we hope our peers and partners from across the ice cream
sector will benefit and work to tackle emissions across the industry. We believe
through collaboration we can reduce the cold chain’s impact on the environment,
whilst continuing to deliver the great quality ice cream products our consumers
love.”
When asked for details on the reformulations, a Unilever spokesperson said the
approach aimed to increase firmness by rebalancing the proportions of
ingredients in the current recipe so that the ice content increases while
retaining the ice cream’s flavor and melting quality, without adding any new
ingredients to the composition of the ice cream.
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Unilever’s Climate Transition Action
Plan
sets out the company’s roadmap to reach its climate targets — including
achieving net-zero emissions across its value chain by 2039, and a science-based
target to halve the emissions impact of its products on a consumer use basis by
2030, against a 2010 baseline. Emissions from retail ice cream freezers account
for 10 percent of Unilever’s value chain greenhouse gas footprint.
As far as the efficiency of the freezers themselves, which Unilever began to
address in
2014,
the company continues work towards ‘warming up’ freezer cabinets by reducing
energy consumption through innovation of the main technical components (e.g.,
compressors) and exploring programs that will enable the freezers to be powered
by renewable electricity.
The international applications of these patents have been published. Industry
partners can contact
[email protected]
to receive further information about obtaining a license.
Published Nov 14, 2023 7am EST / 4am PST / 12pm GMT / 1pm CET
Sustainable Brands Staff