The standard 24-hour ration pack currently issued to Polish troops is the IRŻ – Indywidualna Racja Żywnościowa or Individual Food Ration – produced by Arpol LLC of Zielona Gora, writes Bob Morrison.
In the early summer of 2016, while I was out in Poland covering Exercise ANAKONDA ’16, the Polish Press Officer team was keen to have me publicise their latest ration pack outside of their homeland. I was impressed and, as short code examples of these packs are now appearing on the UK surplus scene, plus as Carl also recently picked up an example of the 2018 production batch Individual One-Meal Food Ration produced by Arpol, this reprise seemed in order before I tuck into our latest Polish ration sample.
Back in the February 2012 issue of COMBAT & SURVIVAL Magazine (which sadly ceased publication in March 2018 after its new sole director put the company into Liquidation) I featured the Polish WRŻ – Wojskowa Racja Żywnościowa or Military Food Ration – which is effectively a 940kcal single meal pack version of the IRŻ 24-hour pack. Also produced by Arpol, a company created 25 years ago in 1993 to produce ration packs for the Polish Armed Forces plus emergency services and disaster relief teams, the WRŻ comes complete with a Flameless Ration Heater (FRH) for the main meal retort pouch and also includes a small pouch of water to activate the chemical reaction which generates the heat.~$~$~

WRŻ contents unpacked but not broken down – FRH is wrapped around main meal pouch – water sachet for heater is bottom left [© BM]
~$~$~
Turning now to the 24-hour IRŻ, also packed in a tough dark green outer bag, unlike the WRŻ it contained canned components rather than retort pouches and a reusable fold-up Field Cooker with fuel tablets rather than a single use FRH. As stated in my original magazine article, the use of cans rather than pouches makes this quite a bulky pack but as the cans are made from an ultra-lightweight aluminium alloy the weight difference between the two types of individual item packaging is actually comparatively minimal. I was given two IRŻ packs for review during ANAKONDA 16, one at Wedrzyn during the urban assault phase and one at the live-fire demo at Drawsko Pomorskie the following day, and fortunately both were different (Menu S-RG-4 and Menu S-RG-5) which allowed me to sample a variety of meals cans. As far as I could determine, there were at least seven different Menu Sets in the S-RG series (there was also a 21 Menu S-R series, which I had not yet seen) and each of the seven packs provides in excess of 3,600kcal if all edible components are consumed.The dark green outer packs have a large pastel green contents label in three languages – English and French, which are NATO standards, and Polish – on which every item is listed, though translations can sometimes be very literal. On the list the contents of the outer pack are broken down into MEAL A, MEAL B, MEAL C, and ADDITIONAL ITEMS (the latter being mostly common to all Menu Sets).

Each IRŻ pack included two foil packs of crispbread (50g) and two packs of hard biscuits (45g) [© BM]

The four IRŻ Menu 4 cans with jam and honey pots – other components are near identical to Menu 5 [© BM]
My only minor complaint would be that the menus seem a little bit ‘samey’, but that may be because I have become accustomed to the wide variety of main courses found in UK Operational Ration Packs. The one area where the Polish IRŻ was markedly different from the likes of UK and US ration packs was the brew pack.

There are 5x foil instant fruit tea (drink) sachets in each IRŻ – teaspoon alongside for size comparison [© BM]

This is the single use Flameless Ration Heater (FRH) issued with each WRŻ with Polish/English instruction sheet alongside [© BM]
{ images © Bob Morrison }
If you came to this page from Facebook or Twitter please Like/Love/Share etc. to spread the word
Pingback : FR61 ~ Polish 24-hour Indywidual Racji Żywnościowej S-RG - Joint Forces News