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The size of food waste in UK manufacturing
The Waste Equation
In an ideal world where, end-to-end as an industry, we are focusing on waste reduction, recovery and reinvestment, the research shows that there is the potential to provide a billion meals, when added to the 148 million meals already delivered by Felix.
Reduce Almost a quarter (23%) of the 550k tonnes of waste in food manufacturing could be prevented with innovation, technology and industry expertise. This would save 128k tonnes of food waste, making savings of nearly £326 million across UK food manufacturing.
Reinvest What if we all come together to invest in producing food specifically for charities – making best use of finance, resources, buying power and skills? For every 10% reinvested into creating balanced plate meals at the lowest marginal manufacturing price, 66 million meals of good food would be generated for charities, or 657 million meals if all those savings were reinvested. Recover After reducing waste, 16% of surplus is fit for human consumption and recoverable without significant financial investment. By putting in place usually simple measures (for instance, collecting food into dolavs and leaving them in the same place each week for volunteers to collect), this 89k tonnes , equivalent to 212 million extra meals , could be sent to community organisations through Felix every year.
1,017m Total meals
1,017m 657m Reinvestment meals
212m 148m + Recovered meals
Definitions
About the data
Tonnes to meals – To convert tonnes to meal equivalents, we have used the WRAP recommendation of 420g as an ‘average’ meal size 3 . Lowest marginal manufacturing price – This is the manufacturer price with labour cost removed to account for meals created during planned downtime or where stranded labour cannot otherwise be redistributed. Balanced plate – The reinvestment data is based on using the Eatwell NHS balanced plate definition.
Data set – The analysis is based on the IRI 2023 dataset of UK retail sales volumes, disaggregated by food category and so covers food and drink products manufactured in the UK and sold through UK retail channels. Products supplied to the hospitality and food service sectors, as well as those produced primarily for export, are excluded from the data scope, as is fresh produce.
Surplus – Extra food suitable for human consumption which can’t be sold because it is not packaged or labelled or does not fit within retailer specifications. Food waste – Food which is not recovered to charities but disposed of through waste programmes, anaerobic digestion or made into animal feed. Food insecurity – Where the household reduces the quality, variety, and desirability of their diets,
or members sometimes disrupt their eating patterns or reduce their food intake because they lack money or other resources for food 2 . Reduce, recover, reinvest – WRAP, the UK Government and the Coronation Food Project recommend that the best approach to surplus recovery is to first reduce waste then recover what can’t be prevented. We have added a third additional step: reinvest.
2 House of Commons Library
3 WRAP, Reporting on the amounts of food surplus redistributed, 2025
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