Product of the Year Spotlight on…The British Crisp Company

Thomas Lock, Founder of Product of the Year 2025 winning brand, The British Crisp Co., talks innovation and why life’s better with a little ‘crunch’.

• Tell us about your winning product and why it resonates with the consumer.

Crisp packets are the poster child of the plastic pollution problem because they are notoriously unrecyclable. We felt compelled to help!

What we’ve created is pretty special – the world’s first fully recyclable crisp packet – which is, ultimately, also why it resonates with consumers. As a smaller, nimbler brand we were able to beat larger organisations to the punch, the companies that dominate the crisps market.

Not that it’s been the quickest process over all – I’ve spent the last five years of my life bringing it to market!

• What was your inspiration for the product?

We wanted to make it much easier for people to recycle with confidence at home. Lots of supermarkets have bins for recycling packaging that can’t be processed in kerbside recycling. These are both inconvenient for consumers and often don’t result in efficient recycling. I remember seeing a study that came out, which involved putting trackers in crisp packets. They found that crisp packets were generally not being recycled. In fact, they were being shipped around the world incinerated or put into landfill. Digging a little deeper, we soon found out that there was no recycling infrastructure for recycling crisp packets and only around 9% of flexible plastics end up being properly recycled globally. The findings set us on a path of discovery.

• What were the challenges you faced?

There were numerous! Challenges are an expected part of the process when bringing a new product to market and that’s two-fold when trying to create something from scratch. We started playing with packaging materials. Paper was our starting point – it’s the most widely recycled packaging and consumers know what to do with it. Paper can be used for crisp packets, but it isn’t ideal for keeping food fresh because it doesn’t protect sufficiently against moisture and air. So, onto the paper, we added a microscopically thin layer of aluminium that helps protect moisture, combined with new polymer named Hydropol, to keep the crisps at optimal freshness. The vacuum process layers everything together to create the final result.  It’s a very clever product developed in the UK – a spinoff of a university research discovery. 

• What trends will you be tapping into this year?

Our plan for rest of year is to roll out this packaging to the rest of our range – The British Crisp Co and Awfully Posh crisps.

• Do you have any new products/ranges that you can tell us about?

This year, we plan to launch the Awfully Posh peanuts range. Watch this space!

• What impact do you hope winning Product of the Year will have on the product?

As a small business, it’s hugely important to win awards like Product of the Year. It’s a stamp of approval and gives consumers confidence in our innovation – knowing that 8,000 consumers voted has helped vouch for it.

• Describe your winning product in 3 words.

An Absolute Gamechanger.

Source: Product Of The Year

  Product Of The Year, The British Crisp Co., Thomas Lock