This morning Findus UK said it had removed 180,000 of its lasagne ready-meals from stores and destroyed a further 200,000 in its warehouses.
Meanwhile Tesco and Aldi have said that they have removed all ready-meals produced by French food supplier, Comigel, from their shelves.
But while this may be a dark cloud for food branding, the packaging industry is focused on the silver lining.
Packaging federation chief executive Dick Searle said: "We are seeing these images of Findus foods being wheeled out but if they are taking all those products off the shelf it is actually going to have a positive impact on the industry."
"In the short term there will probably be more orders going in for cartons to replace those that have been destroyed," he added.
Searle said he didn’t expect the scandal to have any lasting effect on the industry.
"On balance I think this will only have an impact for a short period of time because this isn’t an isolated incident in terms of the number of brands that are involved. It will be fixed swiftly I would imagine," he added.
Meanwhile Nikki Clark, marketing manager of Benson Group, a former supplier to Findus said: "Whilst packaging for the products mentioned to date has not been produced by Benson Group, we are certainly well aware of the fast-turnaround times required for the production of packs at times of crisis, and are more than prepared should any suppliers need to produce a run of product swiftly due to the disposal of stocks."
The message was echoed by BPIF Cartons general manager Neal Whipp: "I’m sure that the carton industry can respond with new packaging in a very short space of time if that is what is required."
