Suma Wholefoods have chosen Prevented Ocean Plastic™.
As a wholesaler Suma deliver over 7,000 vegetarian, natural, healthy and responsibly sourced products to businesses and communities across the UK and internationally. And their much-loved Suma brand food, body care and home cleaning products now number over 1,000, so you can easily choose delicious and sustainable products from people making better choices.
We spoke to Rebecca Kinnard from Suma, about and .
- Hello, Rebecca! Please introduce yourself and the story behind Suma.
“Hi, I’m the product developer for our household range, Ecoleaf by Suma, and I also work in our marketing team.
Suma Wholefoods are a worker co-operative, and we’ve been around since 1977. We’re both a brand and a vegetarian wholesaler, and we’re pretty unique! We operate on 100% equal pay, we’re actually the largest equal-pay co-op in Europe. Being worker-owned is really important to us, and we like to use our co-op as a force for good, always operating as sustainably as we can, and inspiring positive change.
We offer a wide variety of vegetarian, vegan, organic, free-from and specialist food and drink, as well as sustainable household, and hair and body care products. Suma have always been committed to ethical business practices, and have really strict and robust sourcing criteria.
We’ve been built on integrity and equality for over 45 years, and that remains at the heart of who we are. We’re people you can trust to do our homework on ethical issues, so you can be safe in the knowledge that when you buy from Suma, you’re buying well.”
- How does your co-operative model shape the way you work and make decisions?
“As we don’t have any shareholders, and there is no C-suite in sight, Suma is owned and run by the 300+ people who work here. We, Suma’s employees, set the direction of the business. Everyone has an equal say in what we do. We all get paid the same wage, take responsibility and each do a range of jobs each week, from truck driving to cooking to accounts.
When we first started, Suma was small and decision making as a collective was easier, simply because there were less people to consult! As we’ve grown, our structure has changed to reflect our size. We used to have an elected management committee, but now we have an elected board, for example. We also have ‘leaders’ in each of our business areas, and team coordinators, in some ways they are what you’d imagine a line manager to be, but also very different! We promote self-management, and reviews are done with 360-degree feedback.“
- What milestones are you most proud of as a company?
“So many! Being vegetarian from day one, before it was anything like mainstream, and maintaining that for over 48 years, makes us pretty proud. We were the first to bring recycled toiler roll to market in the UK back in 1986, and the first to bring Italian Organic chopped tomatoes to the UK too! We were the first to launch vegan sausages and beans in a tin, now widely impersonated 😉
And of course, being an equal-pay co-op for over 48 years seems pretty impressive.”
- Who is your core customer – and has that changed over the years?
“Our core customer base has changed over the years. We started out servicing the thriving independent wholefood shop market back in the 70s and 80s, when it was harder to find veggie food in supermarkets. Now that the lifestyle is more popular, we’ve seen some independents struggle to keep going. But we’ve adapted to the changes, now selling to online retailers, caterers and foodservice outlets, schools, cafes and, more recently, direct to consumers.
In terms of who buys our products, we know from our market research it is shoppers who consider themselves ethical consumers, often households who take a bit more time researching what they are buying, and those who make more conscious decisions on who they support.”
- Can you talk about the Suma products that are packaged in Prevented Ocean Plastic?
“YES! We’re always looking for new and innovative ways to reduce our plastic impact. When we first heard about Prevented Ocean Plastic (POP), we thought it sounded perfect for us as a way to help address the global plastic problem. We trialled POP in some of our ALTER/NATIVE by Suma hair and body care bottles at the start of 2024, and we’re pleased to say that by the middle of 2024 all of our retail sized bottles of hair and body care (400ml) are now packaged in Prevented Ocean Plastic! That’s seven shampoos, seven conditioners, seven body washes and seven hand washes, 28 lines in total.
ALTER/NATIVE by Suma is our cruelty-free hair and body care range, inspired by the power of plants. The entire range is responsibly sourced, Vegan Society approved and certified cruelty-free under the Leaping Bunny programme. Oh, and it’s made here in the UK. Sustainability is a key focus for our brands.”
- Why did you choose to work with Prevented Ocean Plastic?
“As we were developing our sustainability strategy back in 2023, we continued to explore ways to reduce our impact on the planet. Our ALTER/NATIVE packaging was previously made from post-consumer recycled plastic, but we felt we could and should do more. Our product development team spent time researching alternative packaging solutions for our liquid products for months. When we discovered POP, we loved the idea of not only using recycled plastic, but using plastic that is captured in areas where the need is greatest, and where it is having a bigger impact on reducing ocean bound plastic.
(Working with Prevented Ocean Plastic) means we are actively supporting work that is making a positive impact on the planet and on people’s lives. We’ve enjoyed working with the teams and finding out more and more about the impact POP is having, not only on reducing ocean bound plastic, but on the individual lives of those in the communities where POP works. We’re really proud to be using POP on our retail sized bottles, and are always looking for how we can expand the use of POP across our range further.”
- What do you think choosing recycled means to your customers?
“We know it’s important to our customers, who have always trusted us to do the right thing, not the easy thing. Our bottles were already 100% post-consumer recycled plastic, but by using POP we’ve taken that one step further, by actively reducing the amount of plastic entering the ocean, helping the communities who need it most.”
- Would you encourage other companies to work with Prevented Ocean Plastic?
“Absolutely. Not only is Prevented Ocean Plastic a fantastic and positive initiative, with sustainability at its core, the plastic bottles themselves are also of a really high quality. We’ve never had any issues with our bottles since using POP- the sorting, cleaning and production processes are super stringent.”
- What are Suma’s ambitions for the future?
“Our Sustainability Strategy was launched in 2023, and has bold ambitions which we’re aiming to reach by 2030. Our ambition is for Suma to reach Net Zero greenhouse gases (GHGs) for our scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2035 and Net Zero scope 3 emissions as soon as we can after that. We’re aiming for 75% of our Suma Brand Food products to be certified organic by 2030. We also said we will maximise recycled content in our packaging where possible, aiming for at least 30%, which for our Household, and Hair and Body Care range, we’ve already hit.
We’re not shying away from doing hard things, and we’ve always been honest and transparent in the struggles we sometimes face. But we are committed and we report annually on our progress.”
Thanks Rebecca! Prevented Ocean Plastic is so proud to work with sustainably-minded forward-thinking companies like Suma.
Prevented Ocean Plastic™ is high quality, compliant recycled plastic that has been collected from coastal communities at risk of ocean plastic pollution. Used by supermarkets and brands around the world, it meets regulatory health and safety standards, is traceable back to source and can be identified on-pack through its distinctive triangular logo. Prevented Ocean Plastic™ supply major manufacturing partners such as Groupe Guillin, Spectra Packaging, and Berry Global for offerings across multiple product categories, including food and drink, personal care, pet products and home cleaning. Prevented Ocean Plastic™ is an award-winning, three-time Earthshot Prize nominee, and has collected over 2.5 billion plastic bottles from where they don’t belong since 2020
