A small food manufacturing company based in Lake Hāwea is taking on the industry by producing lightweight meals for outdoor adventures in home compostable packaging. 

Local Dehy owners Frankie Sanders and Emily Warne make dehydrated meals for people going on multi-day adventures, a business borne out of the keen rock climbers' own search for tasty meals suitable for outdoor pursuits. 

While the company initially sold meals in single-use foil bags, the pair have added a home compostable packaging option to their lineup and recently hit the milestone of selling as many home compostable bags as foil ones.

“We are stoked,” Emily said. “It’s so awesome to be able to offer a sustainable alternative for outdoor adventurers.” 

Emily and Frankie had started cooking and dehydrating their own vegan meals for outdoor trips as they couldn’t find options they liked on the market.

“We wanted something that we looked forward to after a long day in the hills,” Frankie said. 

Emily and Frankie say their home compostable packaging has been a hit with customers.

After buying a small commercial food trailer they started making batches of their signature vegan meals and selling them locally and online.

Frankie says she never felt wholly comfortable with the waste issue of the foil bags, but they were convenient to use and easy to source, plus most packaging companies had minimum orders of 10,000 bags which was out of the question for the small home-based business. 

Eventually the couple came across Econic, a Hamilton-based company specialising in home compostable packaging which was willing to produce packaging on the smaller scale Local Dehy needed. They started offering the new packaging in July 2020.

“There was massive support for it straight away, but sales of compostable packaging steadily increased last summer, to the point where now sales of both types of packaging are 50/50,” Emily said.

While Local Dehy still offers foil bags, Emily and Frankie said they hope market demand will continue to shift in favour of home compostable packaging.

Since starting in 2015, Local Dehy has grown to offer a wide range of dehydrated meals, all of them cooked here in the Upper Clutha.

PHOTOS: Supplied