Description:

In 2019 Navico, parent company to the Lowrance®, Simrad Yachting, B&G® and C-MAP® brands announced its renewed focus on becoming a more sustainable company, dedicated to preserving the joy of being on the water for current and future generations.

The first step was a transition to feature 100% recyclable and sustainable packaging in new product offerings.

Navico created its first-ever global team to design and produce new packaging that featured a premium finish, offered a great customer experience, and most importantly, was fully sustainable while remaining cost effective. This cross-functional team featured specialists from different departments including R&D, supply chain, product management, marketing and design.

The team initially focused on high-volume accessories such as display cables and sun covers, transitioning those products from plastic clamshell systems to 100-percent recyclable packaging such as cardboard and paper. Moving from accessories to our main products was more troublesome due to the delicate nature of electronics, and the need to deliver them to our consumers as pristine as when they leave the factory.

Two of main changes introduced for new products in 2021 was to replace Styrofoam that historically protected the electronics and the single use plastic bag to stop scratches on the product due to friction with the Styrofoam.

Styrofoam was replaced with Mushroom® Packaging, which is a custom-moulded material created by combining hemp and mycelium – it’s completely home compostable. Plastic bags that protected the electronics was replaced by using Aquapak’s Hydropol™ bags made from polymers that are specially engineered to be non-toxic, marine-safe and totally soluble in hot water.

After more than a year of research, planning and development, sustainable packaging was featured with the company’s recent navigation and fishfinder releases at the end of 2020— including B&G’s Nemesis and Lowrance’s Elite FS™ displays, as well as ActiveTarget™ Live Sonar.

We are rolling the solution backwards and will remove all plastic, Styrofoam and Instapak by the end of 2021. Overall we are estimating that we will eliminate nearly 400k plastic bags, 500k plastic clamshell packages and remove over 200k instapak inserts.

Not only is the packaging sustainable, it has been a significant step up in terms of aesthetics and experience over our previous packaging. Feedback from both our customers and consumers has been amazing.

“We’re proud to be working with Lowrance and its partner brands – B&G and Simrad,” said noted conservationist and Bass Pro Shops founder/CEO Johnny Morris, “as they’ve a taken a great first step in the past year by re-designing and re-inventing their packaging to feature materials and designs that are more sustainable and earth-friendly.”