Pets at Home Group Plc, the UK’s leading pet care business, has made a strategic investment in Project Blu, a leading eco-conscious supplier of branded pet accessories.
The investment supports Pets at Home’s ambition to become the most sustainable pet care business in the world and includes a commercial partnership agreement on the design and manufacture of sustainable pet care products. Pets at Home will be the first UK retailer to offer Project Blu’s full product range, available across its 457 stores and online from early July 2022.
The importance of sustainable, purpose driven brands and products has never been clearer and the partnership with Project Blu will enable Pets at Home to meet a growing demand from pet owners for planet first, mindful consumption, with a broad range of environmentally friendly products, helping to drive change across the pet accessories market.
Founded in Wales in 2019, with the aim of revolutionalising the pet accessories market through creating sustainable products with the lowest possible environmental impact, Project Blu’s unique manufacturing processes transform polluting materials into premium quality accessories including an innovative range of beds, collars and leashes. Its market-leading range includes durable vegan leather products made from discarded apple skins which reduce carbon emissions by 99 percent compared to traditional leather. A traditional leather leash has a carbon footprint of 6.4 kilograms of CO2 compared to 0.04 kilograms for the apple leather.
Commenting on the partnership, David Robinson, chief operating officer at Pets at Home said: “This partnership is an important step in our mission to become the world’s most sustainable pet care business, and we are hugely excited to be working with Project Blu to broaden our sustainable offering to our customers and their pets.
“This agreement demonstrates a continuing commitment to our social value strategy (‘Our Better World Pledge‘) and importantly creates further opportunities for additional sustainability initiatives in a rapidly growing segment of the market.”
Geryn Evans, chief executive of Project Blu, said: “We are delighted that Pets at Home is aligned to our mission of making environmentally friendly pet accessories and excited to see our products readily available across the UK.
“Our business was established to address an important gap in the market, with strong demand for our products clearly demonstrating an interest in products that are great for both their pets and the planet.”
