Iranian egg producers say they will remove the use of cardboard boxes from packaging to save around $20 million a year.
Farzad Talakesh, a union representative of egg farmers in Iran, said on Monday that the industry is mulling plans to use special trucks for transportation of eggs to the shops that would render useless the cardboard boxes that have served packaging for many years.
Talakesh said the egg farming industry consumes some 83 million metric tons of cardboard each year, the highest among all industries in Iran.
He said the plan would save egg-laying farms across the country around $50,000 a day while it would result in less import into Iran of cardboard rolls.
Iranian egg producers normally use large cardboard boxes to package the nostalgic trays of 30 or 20 that are on offer for final delivery to the customers.
It is not clear when the new transportation scheme would be rolled out. However, the plan is expected to mostly apply to deliveries inside Iran and cardboard would continue to be in use for exports each day of around 100 tons of table eggs to neighboring countries.
Ditching cardboard by the egg farmers in Iran comes amid an unprecedented surge in the price of paper in the country which has caused packaging costs to spiral.
The plan would also mean a huge boost to environmental efforts in Iran as it would significantly reduce the amount of water and energy used during the cardboard production process while it would mean less fuel consumption during transportation due to lighter packaging.