John West vs. Princes: Which Tuna brand is ACTUALLY more sustainable?

Compliance, Eco-Label, Ecosystems, EMSmastery Intermediate, Greenhouse Gas, Plastics, Sustainability, Wildlife Leave a comment

Two cans. Two of the UK’s biggest tuna brands. Both promising to be greener than ever. But when you actually look at what’s wrapped around — and inside — these cans, the approaches couldn’t be more different.

Today we’re breaking down exactly how Princes and John West are tackling packaging waste, and which one is actually winning the sustainability race.

WHY TUNA PACKAGING IS A PROBLEM
Canned tuna looks simple with a simple steel can, which can easily be opened revealing flavoursome chunks of tuna. But the packaging stack that you can find in your supermarket is more complex than it seems. You’ve got the steel can itself, a multipack wrapper — traditionally plastic shrink film or cardboard — a label, a ring-pull, and the liquid inside, whether that’s brine, spring water, or sunflower or olive oil, most of which gets poured down the drain. Multiply that across tens of millions of cans a year, and even small design tweaks add up to thousands of tonnes of material saved and reductions in the carbon dioxide emitted during their transportation.

PRINCES: THE CARDBOARD SWITCH
Princes’ big packaging move has been shifting its branded tuna multipacks away from plastic shrink wrap and onto Forest Stewardship Council (or FSC) certified cardboard sleeves. The company expects this single change to remove around 96 tonnes of plastic from its tuna range every year. It’s part of a much bigger plastic-reduction push across the wider group — Princes has set out plans to cut roughly 900 tonnes of plastic packaging across its brands, which has also seen its Napolina pasta range move from plastic bags into cardboard.

PRINCES: SOURCING MILESTONE
On the sourcing side, Princes hit a major milestone in early 2026: 100% of its branded tuna — around 70 million cans a year — now comes from Marine Stewardship Council certified fisheries. That’s the culmination of roughly a decade of supply chain work, and it extends to other species too, including a shift away from Northeast Atlantic mackerel toward MSC-certified Chilean fisheries after concerns about stock health.

JOHN WEST: THE ECOTWIST REVOLUTION
John West has taken a completely different route. Instead of switching materials, they eliminated an entire packaging layer. Their Ecotwist system — developed with packaging partners Schubert Packaging Systems, CCL Label, and Touch Design — replaces both shrink wrap and cardboard multipack trays with a single aluminium strip, nicknamed the SmartStrip, that consumers twist and pull to open. It’s designed to be recycled together with the can through normal UK kerbside collection. The numbers: around 65 tonnes of plastic shrink wrap removed annually, plus the equivalent of about 300 tonnes of cardboard avoided altogether — because there’s no multipack tray at all.

JOHN WEST: LIGHTWEIGHTING & THE NEW POUCH
John West, also, redesigned the can itself — same amount of tuna, but a lighter can, saving over 400 tonnes of steel a year, and less excess brine or oil, cutting a further 1,500 tonnes of liquid waste annually. And in 2026, parent company Thai Union pushed further with ‘Stir & Serve’ — a shelf-stable tuna pouch made from a single material, polypropylene, developed with packaging supplier Mondi. Unlike traditional foil-laminate pouches, which mix materials and are hard to recycle, this one can go into standard recycling streams across Europe.

HEAD-TO-HEAD COMPARISON
Put side by side, it’s less about one brand being ‘right’ and more about two different philosophies. Princes leaned into swapping plastic for cardboard and completing its sustainable sourcing commitment. John West leaned into removing packaging layers entirely and redesigning the can and its contents.

THE VERDICT
So who’s ahead? On raw sourcing, Princes’ 100% MSC-certified claim is fully realized today, covering its whole branded tuna range. On packaging innovation, John West’s Ecotwist arguably goes further, because it doesn’t just switch materials, it removes a packaging layer altogether and improves recyclability at the can level. If I had to call it: John West edges it on packaging engineering, Princes edges it on the completion of their sustainable sourcing commitments. Realistically, both are responding to the same pressure — regulation, retailer demands, and consumer expectations — and that competition is good news for anyone eating tuna.

A full source list is given below this article, if you want to dig into the original press releases yourself to find out more about the two differing packaging and sustainability strategies

Let me know in the comments which brand you buy — and if there’s another packaging showdown you want to be covered next.

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SOURCE LIST FOR ARTICLE:

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