As food insecurity rises, Newton, The Felix Project and FareShare, and Alliance Food Sourcing, welcomed by the Coronation Food Project, have collaborated on research into how to get more good food to people who need it.
The Waste Equation How the UK food and drink industry could provide a billion meals to people in need
Contents
Executive summary A food waste win-win
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Introduction Using our resources for good (Tim Murray, Partner, Newton)
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Top line research findings The Waste Equation
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Scene setting Manufacturing as the industry focus
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Part 1. Reduce Innovatively reducing manufacturing food waste
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Part 2. Recover Recovering food systematically and with certainty
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Part 3. Reinvest Reinvesting resources to make the greatest collective impact
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Conclusion More food, more consistently will transform communities (Charlotte Hill OBE, CEO, The Felix Project and FareShare)
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Connect
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About Research, Newton, The Felix Project and FareShare, and Alliance Food Sourcing
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Newton x The Felix Project and FareShare – The Waste Equation
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Dame Martina Milburn DCVO CBE Executive Chair Coronation Food Project
At the Coronation Food Project, we are determined to drive systemic change, from surplus to sustainable. That’s why we welcome this report – a clear guide for how the food industry can waste less and help feed more families and communities. If everyone across the supply chain makes a contribution – whether that is food, fridges, fleet or funding – this initiative can save substantially more surplus food and change more lives.”
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY A food waste win-win Reducing and recovering food waste and surplus, and reinvesting savings to help with food insecurity “ Even if we only achieve a small proportion of what is suggested in this report, we can feed millions more people who don’t have access to affordable or nutritious food. It is worth repeating: we can have a huge impact, and often easily.” Tim Murray , Partner, Newton
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The Waste Equation reveals how food and drink manufacturers could reduce waste, recover what surplus remains and reinvest savings and other resources, to provide a billion meals a year to people in need. Developed by Newton, The Felix Project and FareShare, and IGD’s Alliance Food Sourcing (AFS), it acknowledges that the causes of food insecurity cannot be solved by increasing food supply. However, often simple changes could significantly help reduce food insecurity in communities, and encourage people to access further support addressing the root causes of poverty. The report shows the size of the opportunity – how many meals is there the potential to send to frontline charities if manufacturing food waste was reduced , unpreventable surplus was recovered and savings were reinvested into making new food? It then outlines how we can achieve this enduring change together. Every organisation can be involved – even those with no waste or surplus – by contributing expertise, fridge space, factory lines, logistics and beyond.
Data findings UK retailers sell 18.5 million tonnes of UK manufactured food and drink each year. In the process of creating that food, we have found around 550k tonnes is wasted – equivalent to 3% of sales . There is the potential to:
Reduce
Reinvest
Recover
Reduce waste by 23% (128k tonnes) through innovation, technology and industry expertise, saving £326 million for UK food manufacturing.
Recover 16% (89 tonnes) of
Reinvest the £326 million saving to help even more people by using the savings from reducing waste to manufacture additional food, generating 657 million meals to donate.
Existing pipeline of food recovered by The Felix Project and FareShare = 148 million meals.
surplus that can’t be prevented cost effectively, creating the equivalent of 212 million meals for frontline charities.
Altogether, we could provide one billion (1,017 million) meals to people who need them. That is seven times as much as The Felix Project and FareShare currently recover each year as it helps the millions of adults and families in the UK facing food insecurity. = Over a billion meals 1,017 million meals
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A meaningful difference
To recover this incredible amount of surplus, this report focuses on unlocking these three key areas, providing frameworks, advice and real-world examples to drive change. In line with UK government, WRAP and the Coronation Food Project recommendations, the first step to feeding more people sustainably is to reduce waste, then recover surplus that remains. The final additional step – reinvest – is a data-backed, evidence-based idea to use savings and donations with the greatest impact.
The report covers:
Part 1. Reduce
Part 2. Recover
Part 3. Reinvest
To help address food waste, six key types of food waste in UK manufacturing are identified, as well as their root causes, innovative tech-enabled solutions, and a five-step reduction model.
Based on The Felix Project and FareShare expertise and best practice examples, the report explains the straightforward process to recover food surplus that can’t be prevented.
For those with no waste or who want to offer greater support, the report outlines how to reinvest the food waste savings along with other resources, such as donations and team capacity.
The research shaped The Felix Project and FareShare’s Policy Memo to the UK government asking it to incentivise and offset losses of revenue generated from sending surplus to animal feed and anaerobic digestion, and prevent surplus food from going to other lower value destinations like landfill. We all want a thriving, prosperous United Kingdom. And, more importantly, if food is available, there is a moral obligation for all of us to make sure it makes it to the table of families in need. If everybody gets involved in a meaningful way, we can genuinely make a step change in 2026.” Charlotte Hill OBE , CEO, The Felix Project and FareShare “
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INTRODUCTION Using our resources for good
I was volunteering in one of The Felix Project’s depots when two pallets of carrots arrived. By chance, they were from the regular redistribution of surplus root vegetables that the Newton team had helped set up at Morrisons’ Flaxby manufacturing site 1 . Seeing the volunteers excited to send out fresh produce brought to life how important it is that we continue to recover good food. It really hit home as well: we could have sent out so much more. The Felix Project and FareShare don’t receive enough food to keep up with demand and with food insecurity expected to continue to rise, the gap between needs and availability will widen.
I came away invigorated and sure that we can do more, as an organisation and an industry. It got me thinking: how can Newton help best? Our strong suit is getting into the details of an issue and developing innovative, practical solutions which create real momentum. So, that’s the approach we took to developing this report. By analysing millions of tonnes of food manufactured in the UK, along with our partners at The Felix Project and FareShare, we created a Manufacturing Waste Map to provide visibility on where waste is greatest. In line with the UK Government and WRAP’s food and drink waste hierarchy, we have then shared practical solutions to reduce food waste and recover unpreventable surplus.
1 For more on this work click here
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Financing the good fight Our premise – how to provide a billion meals to people in need – is wildly aspirational. But even if we only achieve a small proportion of what is suggested in this report, we can feed millions more people who don’t have access to affordable or nutritious food. It is worth repeating: we can have a huge impact, and often easily. The easy option operationally, and financially, is often to send unsaleable but edible food to become animal feed, or for use in anaerobic digestion. For organisations to be able to act at the scale required, we need to be onto a win-win, balancing making a positive impact with profitability. Here’s my suggestion. Again, let’s think about the resources available to us. If we work to reduce waste and reinvest some of those savings into producing more food at cost price using stranded labour, lines and other spare resources, I believe there’s a chance to do the right thing for the world, but also the right thing for each business.
Cross-industry collaboration Nobody has to solve this issue alone: it is through collaborating, sharing costs, resources and expertise that we have impact. The food and drink industry plays a pivotal role in feeding millions of people a year who don’t have access to affordable food. I’m proud of all the food recovered so far during our partnership with The Felix Project and FareShare, Alliance Food Sourcing and the Coronation Food Project. The Felix Project and FareShare already provide many millions of meals each year to people across the country. The question now is, how do we go even further? A sincere thank you to everyone who is involved in rescuing food and everyone who gets involved with ‘The Waste Equation’.” Tim Murray Partner, Newton
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TOP LINE RESEARCH FINDINGS The Waste Equation: Reduce, recover, reinvest Together, we have the potential to provide a billion meals to people facing food insecurity.
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Traditionally, retail has been the biggest supplier of recovered, edible surplus to the charity sector. But, at the same time as demand for food support grows, retail surplus has been reducing because grocery supply chains are improving. Could manufacturing be a new focus area for recovering surplus for the end-to-end supply chain?
Our research shows food and drink manufacturing can collectively make a significant contribution not only to reducing levels of food waste but also using the associated cost savings to help reduce food insecurity. UK retailers sell 18.5 million tonnes of UK manufactured food and drink each year. In the process of creating that food, we have found around 550k tonnes is wasted – equivalent to 3% of sales . There is the potential to:
Reduce 128k tonnes food waste
Recover 89k tonnes surplus to charities
Reinvest £326 million at lowest manufacturing price
Existing pipeline of food recovered by The Felix Project and FareShare
£326 million savings
212 million meals
657 million meals
148 million meals
= Over a billion meals 1,017 million meals
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The size of food waste in UK manufacturing
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 The Felix Project and FareShare every year.
Definitions
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
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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 The Felix Project and FareShare.
1,017m Total meals
1,017m 657m Reinvestment meals
212m 148m + Recovered meals
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.
3 WRAP, Reporting on the amounts of food surplus redistributed, 2025
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SCENE SETTING Manufacturing as the industry focus
With EU members working towards a 10% food waste reduction in food processing and manufacturing by 2030 4 , this is the time for focus as an industry. Even if only half of what is outlined in the report happens, we would get close to achieving this same progress. It can only be the right thing to do as food insecurity remains consistently high in the UK 5 , with millions of adults and families facing food insecurity every month.
4 European Commission, Food waste reduction targets, 2025 5 The Food Foundation, 2025
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“
The numbers in this report are so large that they could be easy to hide behind as individual organisations. And it’s true: none of us can achieve these transformative figures alone – it is as a whole connected industry that we make inroads. Collaboration at this scale may sound ambitious but it is actually surprisingly simple, even for competing organisations, to come together when the rewards are so meaningful to the communities we all serve. Every time surplus can be saved or generated, Alliance Food Sourcing has the relationships to bring the right mix of retailers, manufacturers, consultants and producers together so everyone brings their best to the table – whether that is finance, fridges or experience on how
to recover surplus cost effectively.” Nicola Robinson, Alliance Food Sourcing, Director
If we see the food and drink supply chain as being made up of households, primary producers, manufacturing, hospitality and food services and retail – where is our biggest opportunity to recover edible food?
Focus has often been on retail as food is already packaged and easy to share. But as grocery supply chains improve and create less surplus, contributions are likely to fall. More edible food goes to waste in manufacturing than retail (0.8 vs. 0.3 million tonnes a year 6 ). Surplus is also easier to recover from factories than by visiting restaurants, farms or homes. Manufacturing offers a potential area of focus for the whole industry.
Edible food surplus (million tonnes a year)
Households
Primary producers
Manufacturing
Hospitality and food services
Retail
0 . 3
4.5
2.9
0.8
0.8
6 WRAP
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PART 1 Reduce Innovatively reducing manufacturing food waste Most organisations already have a focus on reducing waste, so the question is, how is it possible to go further? We have found nearly a quarter (23%) of UK food manufacturing waste could be prevented each year, and to unlock that requires a combination of adjusting specifications so they still meet customer needs, tighter operational control, innovation and technology.
23%
The amount of UK food manufacturing waste that could be prevented each year
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I know we’ve been focusing on reduction for many years now so it can feel like there are diminishing returns. But there’s more waste and money to be saved. Waste isn’t a part of the P&L that you have to swallow each year. That’s especially true with today’s technology. The sophistication and granularity of supply chain and consumer data we have at our fingertips is incredible and increasing.” Tim Murray , Partner, Newton “
Industry examples A leading convenience food manufacturer reduced fresh food waste by 15% and saved £20 million pounds a year by hiring a raft of new people to drive performance using diagnostics, new structures and processes. At a famous biscuit factory, the size and shape of products varied, leading to unnecessary waste. Putting in place a data-driven system to spot opportunities to correct issues and
improve ongoing operational efficiency achieved a £2.3 million increase in projected annual revenue.
At a large baking firm, three separate systems were joined to create a single view from point of manufacture to delivery to the warehouse, resulting in a 20% improvement in line efficiency and £3 million reduction in distribution costs.
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How to reduce waste as an organisation
Change is driven by true collaboration between everyone from the boardroom to the factory floor including purchasing, finance, brand, internal communications and HR. From here, there are five key steps.
Deep dive Spot the opportunities to reduce waste at every possible moment, even in places where it’s traditionally been seen as unavoidable. Expertise – People across silos will have ideas on what is and isn’t working, and why: what is being overlooked as it happens so often? Are specifications being set too high meaning saleable products are wasted? Evidence – It’s essential to have a granular, quantified understanding of the root cause of all waste: where, why and when is it happening? This is complex, requiring the knitting together of existing data with new data feeds, but this is now possible with the latest advancements in IoT and AI. Only by having a complete intolerance to waste and measuring loss to ‘perfect’ does it become clear what waste can be innovatively reduced.
Think wide Challenge current systematic issues and processes about what is and isn’t possible.
Based on your initial theories, carry out factory walks. Take a step back and ask unconstrained questions: 1. If we were designing a new factory, how would it run? 2. For a new process, what would the steps be? 3. Where are we today, what are the gaps and how do we reduce them? With the mindset that all waste can be reduced, constraints aren’t blockers but challenges to overcome.
01 02
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Prioritise Create clear next steps from this complex set of variables, based on a combination of ease and value. The reality is that most of the easy opportunities will already have been solved. By definition, there is a highest value opportunity remaining. Start there and be relentless in pursuit of improving it. Solve for the next highest priority, and so on.
Analyse Make the case for change based on data and facts, not emotion. Run a small test. Work out the financial implications so you can make a financially compelling case for change. Project the ongoing financial impact and present to stakeholders to gain alignment.
Operationalise Momentum is created by enabled, empowered teams with problem solving capability, and access to both root cause analysis and real-time data that provides visibility of issues. To make change a reality technically, engage the hearts and minds of employees. Put in place technology to enable
real-time decision making. Regularly deep dive with new people and partners to keep spotting opportunities. 03 04 05
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Where to look
1. Largest opportunity: Preparation When there is excess due to the preparation method, for instance cut offs from pastry. 2. Operations Losses or discarded materials caused by routine production inefficiencies or errors in equipment operation, handling or process execution. 3. Quality control When waste is superficially flawed (such as misshapen biscuits or carrots that are too wonky) but perfectly safe for consumption. 4. Giveaway Excess product included beyond the declared or required weight/ volume due to overfilling. 5. Changeover Product loss generated when switching between different products, recipes or packaging formats, including flushing, cleaning and recalibrating production lines. 6. Planning Losses caused by scheduling errors, poor forecasting, or incorrect documentation that leads to overproduction, wrong product runs or idle production capacity, e.g. having cooked too much rice to go with the amount of chicken available to make a curry.
5%
15%
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To help manufacturers pinpoint their reducible waste, our Manufacturing Waste Map 7 finds that there are six key moments when food waste occurs. That could be recovered Waste
25% 37% of waste 20% 39% of waste 30% 13% of waste
of that could be recovered
of that could be recovered
of that could be recovered
10% 3% 10% 4% 25% 4%
of waste
of that could be recovered
of waste
of that could be recovered
of waste
of that could be recovered
35%
45%
25%
7 See ‘About the research’ to find out more about how the Manufacturing Waste Map was developed.
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The root cause of most of these issues is one or a combination of failures around product and packaging design, process and system design or operational control and conversion. Each of these root causes can be significantly reduced with a set of fairly simple actions. Overcoming common barriers
WASTE REASON
SOLUTION
Product and packaging design Example: Waste caused by inefficiently designed product or packaging specifications. Found in: Quality Control, Preparation, Planning, Operations. Issue: Innovation without understanding factory constraints can lead to specifications that effectively build repeated waste. Often product development is carried out in a test kitchen disconnected from operational teams. Designers may not realise that, at scale, certain standards add a level of unnecessary complexity and waste. As a result, manufacturers may agree specifications with retailers that are not operationally ideal. Agreements can get close to the boundaries of what is practically possible.
Connection and conversation Manufacturers Are product development teams
connected to operations so they have clarity on the constraints of the business, knowing which features are likely to cause surplus or waste issues? Can you have data-led, open discussions with retailers when setting specifications? Retailers Are you asking questions of manufacturers about which features add cost and drive product into the bin? Do customers care which way up a pepper is placed? Do sausage rolls need to be an exact width and length to the millimetre? Is the colour range agreed on loaves of bread unnecessarily tight? Use data to get clear on what customers notice and appreciate, so you can challenge assumptions about specifications. Do long-term agreements with suppliers, set thoughtful targets for waste reduction and agree how to invest to reduce waste, for instance by updating machinery?
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WASTE REASON
SOLUTION
Process and system design Example: Systematic waste due to processes and supply chain designs that lack agility and are held back by batch requirements or outdated planning systems. Found in: Quality Control, Preparation, Giveaway, Planning, Operations, Changeover. Issue: When making complex products, waste is inevitable if systems and processes are not fully understood and constantly monitored. Look at ready meals. If five components make up a chicken curry, as soon as the first element runs out, there is no use for the other four ingredients. If the shelf life is short, manufacturers end up throwing them all away. This shortfall could be the result of any one of a multitude of assumptions being inaccurate – what yield will be achieved after the chicken is prepared, and then cooked, and then cooled, for instance.
Non-stop issue spotting and correction Given the number of items in the supply chain of a typical manufacturing process and the frequency at which those change, it is impossible to manually interrogate data and get to root causes fast. Reducing waste is rarely about finding a 20% gain every three months: it’s 100 smaller changes that create a cumulative incremental impact. There might be a theme to them, such as an incorrect piece of data that means all the yields throughout the process are out. But even then, multiple changes will be required. High frequency data analytics and AI can help spot and track exceptions, providing ongoing visibility of where loss is occurring and what needs to be solved. On one production line for instance, an AI solution identified additional edible food surplus that could be sold for human consumption over animal feed, resulting in a 15-fold increase in revenue from surplus 8 . Manufacturers should be confident their data is accurate, churn through actions to spot issues, build consensus and remedy rather than simply report when it’s too late. Even if a factory was to hit on the perfect ratio, there would be some waste as most manufacturers build in a production surplus rather than risk undersupplying. Retailers can play their part in reducing waste by discussing levels of planned surplus and agreeing a plan of what to do with it.
8 Scaling AI-led food waste and surplus visibility, reduction and redistribution, Sustainable Ventures, 2026
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WASTE REASON
SOLUTION
Operational control and conversion
Simple KPIs Establish good improvement cycles and agree accountability. Identify the visibility of key metrics of waste and the leading cause, making sure to include clear targets and an accountable owner who can make a difference. Prioritise, helping managers do fewer things incredibly well, for instance setting KPIs for pack weight and line speed. Make sure they know the importance of managing these and what they need to do to make a difference. Put in place reviews as part of daily or weekly management processes and build everything into rewards and recognitions to make it really matter to people.
Example: Inconsistently setup machine specifications, behavioural management and functional factory operation. Found in: Quality Control, Preparation, Giveaway, Planning, Operations, Changeover. Issue: Motivated people improving operational performance reduce waste. Managers on the floor are often responsible for many areas – some of which they have little control over such as waste levels or whether a line breaks down – with no real prioritisation and no clarity of what really drives performance.
3% 23% of food waste in UK manufacturing of it is avoidable Of the
Tackling that may require one-off investments – in improving data collection, analysis and training, or updates to machinery. But in many cases, waste can be reduced without significant capital expenditure, for instance by agreeing reduced specifications that still more than meet customer requirements. The answer to the right action lies in having the data-backed insights to make important decisions about the opportunities to pursue.
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PART 2 Recover Recovering food systematically and with certainty From the Manufacturing Waste Map which shapes this report, we can see that even after reducing waste as outlined in ‘Part 1. Reduce’, 89k tonnes of good food could be recovered into charities each year. How is this best achieved – setting up consistent, ongoing supplies that volunteers can distribute to help the most people?
89k tonnes
Additional food that could be recovered into charities each year
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Every food surplus recovery programme within every factory is unique so the examples included in this section are honestly just a handful of ways food can be recovered. But I’ve seen first-hand that there is nearly always a way to get food to us – and simply too. We’re always developing new approaches and even bring in consultants from Newton in more complex cases. We do everything we can to get your food to the families and people in crisis who really need it.” Joshua Wheeler Senior Programme Manager – Innovation and Development, The Felix Project and FareShare “
How to recover good food from factories Getting surplus to charities in a food-safe, practical and cost-efficient way varies by product and site, but The Felix Project and FareShare do it every day. The first step is to get in touch with them to spot common sense opportunities and talk through which of the four key methods for recovery may be appropriate for your situation.
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The Felix Project and FareShare’s four approaches to food recovery
Redirect In the simplest cases, food items such as unpacked fresh fruit are collected (usually in bulk bags) and moved to The Felix Project and FareShare depots and labelled to ensure traceability.
Relabel Some food items need labelling to ensure compliance and traceability. They could have the wrong (or no) label for many reasons – the weight or ingredients list could be incorrect, they may have come from a ready meal so were never meant to be sold to the public, or they could have been produced for a country with different labelling rules.
Repack If food was never intended for sale so is not packaged or a brand does not want imperfect items out in the public, surplus can be repacked into a format The Felix Project and FareShare can use.
Repurpose This method combines surplus ingredients into new food items altogether. This can be achieved within charities’ kitchens if they receive regular food from the same suppliers, for example, pastry offcuts from one manufacturer and chicken from another could be made into a pie. Suppliers could also repurpose on their own site with their own ingredients, such as making a soup out of vegetable offcuts.
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How to recover each type of surplus in food manufacturing
1. Preparation
3. Quality control (QC)
Repurpose Pastry offcuts can be cooked with other surplus ingredients to make pies. Vegetable offcuts can be made into healthy soups and, with protein added, into stews. Barfoots , prepares butternut squash and sweet potatoes, cutting them into squares, there are some offcuts which are still nutritious but don’t fit within specifications. The Felix Project and FareShare repacks these nutritious vegetables and transports them to charities. Repack Surplus produced during preparation can be packaged up and recovered. When vegetable grower and manufacturer,
Since May 2024, 210 tonnes of root vegetables – equivalent to 0.5 million meals – have been redirected through the Morrisons and Myton Food Group collaboration with The Felix Project and FareShare. Relabel When items are over or under a weight requirement, the label can be updated, enabling recovery. Millions of pounds of underweight cereal bars are repackaged into larger packets and sent to The Felix Project and FareShare at a cost of £10,000 a year – just 2.3% of the retail value. At a bakery firm, 3-4% of baked goods with aesthetic quality issues are recovered to The Felix Project and FareShare. That is 7-11 tonnes of edible food every week, worth £1.8 million a year at a cost to the baker of just £155,000. Repack Where items regularly fail a check – such as pastry or bread not meeting a colour specification due to uneven cooking at an industrial scale – these can be put into compliantly labelled packaging and picked up by The Felix Project and FareShare. Relabel/redirect If there is a QC issue on an item that was created to be exported, it can be relabelled to ensure it is traceable and compliant in the UK. Repurpose Food that doesn’t pass QC but is still edible can be transformed into something completely new. Raspberries that are too soft to eat could be collected and juiced at The Felix Project and FareShare hubs, or third party facilities. Redirect Produce which has been graded out can be simply redirected.
2. Operations
Redirect When items fall outside specifications or
Fresh produce supplier, Primafruit’s second and third grade bananas are placed into dolavs. The Felix Project and FareShare collects and moves them to their regional hubs to repackage them. This provides a regular supply of high quality fruit, at little cost to the manufacturer and with the benefit of not having to send items to waste. When BerryWorld’s berries are either too small or misshapen for retailers to sell, this fruit is placed into lined crates donated by WestPak , which is then collected by The Felix Project and FareShare each day. inefficiencies create surplus, for instance misshapen or extra fruit and vegetables, they can be simply redirected to The Felix Project and FareShare. Relabel If an incorrect ingredient has been added to a ready meal, or items have been made for a foreign market but can’t be sent due to purchasing, forecasting or shipping errors, relabelling makes recovery possible.
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Surplus type
Approach
4. Giveaway
5. Changeover
When farmers have produced more than can be sold, The Felix Project and FareShare help with harvesting produce that would otherwise go to waste. Redirect If manufacturers regularly create excess volumes of food, The Felix Project and FareShare can redirect those items. Premium, pre-prepared meals brand known for their delicious, handmade dishes, Charlie Bigham’s , provides a regular expected supply of sauce to The Felix Project and FareShare. This is used to create rice and pasta dishes by charities. Repack If a supplier creates more sauce than is required, it can be bagged up for The Felix Project and FareShare to collect. The Felix Project and FareShare used a batch of McDonald’s fries to create a potato soup. Repurpose Excess can be turned into a repurposed dish on site or in collaboration with other partners.
Waitrose worked with their supplier Daybreak as when changeovers between pasta shapes takes place, some broken pasta is produced. This is repacked into surplus packaging and sent to The Felix Project and FareShare. Repack Items can be produced during flushing, cleaning and recalibrating which are still edible.
6. Planning
On one line, Two Sisters Food Group sends millions of pounds worth of food to The Felix Project and FareShare every year. When breaded chicken fails quality check for visual issues, such as uneven coating, it is re-run through the packing line into plastic boxes, chilled on site and collected three times a week by volunteers. Stickers are added making it clear that these items are for The Felix Project and FareShare and not for resale. Leaders are committed to investing resources into getting edible but unsaleable food to people in need. Repack If there has been overproduction, wrong product runs or idle production capacity, items can be repacked and moved to charities.
“There is so much that we do to help. We’re not asking anyone to set up new packing stations on their site. We have volunteers and a processing line at Oakland International that can prepare products to go to charities. In the case of Two Sisters’ breaded chicken, the food that fails QC is set to one side. Then when there is capacity, it is run back down the line for repacking. It’s such an easy but innovative way to use existing resources to do good.” Joshua Wheeler Senior Programme Manager – Innovation and Development, The Felix Project and FareShare “
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There are five key reasons why not all recoverable food is saved. Barriers to recovering food
1. Financial and labour cost
Cost per kg recovered Protein Sweets and snacks Dairy and alternatives Cupboard staples Fruit and vegetables
£1.06
92p 58p 35p 31p 28p 26p 17p
Companies can be wary of the ongoing costs and commitments. In particular, where KPIs are measured in detail, there can be concerns about adding extra processes to already stretched teams. To recover food, there is almost always an investment required in people resources, requiring leadership agreement and in-depth understanding of down time and resourcing. But there is not always a huge cost. Research enabled by our AI-powered cost modelling software finds fruit and vegetables and cupboard staples have a relatively low cost to recover as they do not need to be chilled or packaged. Other categories, in particular proteins, are more expensive due to the operational complexity – but even then there are processes to ensure that this can be achieved at a relatively low cost.
Frozen food
Starch Drinks
In fact, our calculations show that the cost to recover one meal is on average 17p. This is a third of what the same plate would cost to manufacture from scratch (50p). The difference in cost is because for the recovered food, there is no retailer or manufacturer margin, and money has already been spent preparing the food regardless of whether it is recovered or not. This offsets the additional labour or packaging required for extraction and distribution.
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Finding finance If savings cannot be found by reducing waste as outlined in ‘Part 1. Reduce’, and there are no relevant ESG initiatives available to fund recovery, there are still a number of alternative funding options: Sainsbury’s and Greencore spotted the opportunity to use some surplus manufacturing capacity to create additional food at as low cost as possible. They then generated the funds to pay to make and redirect the food with an on- pack promotion which generated enough to produce one million ready meals. Multiple retailers, including Tesco, Morrisons, Sainsbury’s and Waitrose have participated in the ‘Let’s make a meal of it’ fundraising campaign, in which money is raised at the till to spend on sourcing and redistributing meals from surplus food.
?
FAQ: Are there any items The Felix Project and FareShare won’t take? Apart from alcohol, there are no blanket bans and The Felix Project and FareShare explore the merits of each potential donation.
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2. Brand reputation Organisations can be concerned about consumers seeing imperfect products featuring their brand. Products can be repacked and relabelled making it clear that they are for The Felix Project and FareShare distribution and not for resale. Many organisations use their food waste reduction and surplus recovery programmes as a way to boost brand reputation by demonstrating how they care for their communities and the environment. The many examples in this report evidence exactly that.
3. Traceability Products need to be traceable in case they are recalled. Every item that is sent to The Felix Project and FareShare is logged in an online database. Volunteers record every time an item is moved through the network to a new warehouse or to a charity so that The Felix Project and FareShare knows where it came from, where it has been, where it went and how long it has been in the system. As a food business, The Felix Project and FareShare has a documented food safety management system which lists everything that needs to be done to keep food safe – how it is delivered to the warehouse, stored, picked and dispatched. The Felix Project and FareShare depots are audited at least twice a year, once internally and once by an industry-leading third-party who make sure all required standards are met and documented.
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FAQ: Isn’t it a risk to talk about the food waste created in our processes? Surplus is inevitable in food production because we are dealing with unpredictable natural products – and yet still only 3% of it currently goes to waste. Doing the best that we can to prevent that waste and recover what we can is what charities such as WRAP, as well as the government and His Majesty King Charles III, consider to be the best industry approach.
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4. Labelling Ingredients must be listed correctly to prevent allergy issues. If an item is labelled with the wrong ingredients, is written in a different language, for a different legal jurisdiction, or has not got all the allergens highlighted: When it is allocated to a charity, The Felix Project and FareShare’s online database will automatically generate a dispatch note including the spec sheet sent by the manufacturer. If it is going to be given or sold to an individual, it will be relabelled or overlabelled with the accurate information, for instance a sticker could be added by volunteers at the depot stating that the product contains milk if this has not been highlighted in the allergens list. The Felix Project and FareShare work closely with every manufacturer it partners with to make sure that they are comfortable with the end-to-end solution. They are experts in developing options based on the practical unique situation but in the rare cases where they are in new territory, they have consultants on hand to help if there are any questions about formatting or legalities and the approach will also be checked with the primary authority, The Royal Borough of Greenwich.
FAQ: Could our brand be damaged if people see imperfect products? The Felix Project and FareShare will work with you to ensure that any food which is recovered is labelled and packaged appropriately.
5. Silos Due to competing demands, some teams may be more committed to reducing waste than others. Operations, commercial and ESG teams need to all have the ambition to reduce waste together. This alignment is often the result of inspiring and enabling leadership, and the understanding that getting involved holds advantages for everybody – helping ESG teams meet their targets and commercial teams to build relationships with retailers.
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Simple steps to a significant impact Even small percentages of regular surplus add up over time. Any amount is worth talking to the The Felix Project and FareShare team about, who are hands on in coming up with bespoke solutions for each organisation. Some companies fill a dolav with food each week for volunteers to pick up, where others have pick-ups every day in larger quantities.
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Businesses can worry about damage to their brand reputation caused by imperfect products being in the public domain, or food not being kept at the right temperature. But we have robust supply chains in place with carefully managed temperature- controlled environments, and ways to relabel or repackage products to maintain brand reputation. It really is easier than it might seem.” David Stokes Head of Strategic Sourcing Alliance Food Sourcing
There is a perception that manufacturers need to save
large amounts of surplus for it to be worthwhile but that is not the case. Regular surplus that can be simply extracted is available on far more sites than people realise. Look for repeatable instances of surplus, then get in touch with The Felix Project and FareShare who can work out how to get that particular type of food to the right partners, in the right packaging
with the right storage and transportation options.” Matthew Knox Director, Newton
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PART 3 Reinvest
Reinvesting resources to make the greatest collective impact In line with the UK government, WRAP and the Coronation Food Project recommendations, this report has revealed how to reduce waste, then recover surplus that remains. This final additional section outlines ideas on how to collaborate in reinvesting for the greatest impact.
Meals generated if savings from reducing waste are reinvested to manufacture additional food to donate 657m 33
Creating the greatest impact
Where are the best places for us to focus as an industry to get food to people who need it? At just 17p per meal, recovering surplus food is incredibly cost effective, so it is right that this is the initial focus to help the most people. But where next? And what if your category already has a low or no surplus?
With £326 million worth of potential savings created by reducing waste plus extensive retail corporate social responsibility initiatives to tap into, the impact of this innovative approach would be significant.
What if we were to all come together to produce more food specifically for charities? What if at the same time, all the incredible resources of retailers and manufacturers were brought together – finance from ESG and marketing initiatives, factory lines, fridges, vans, buying power and innovative skills in recovering food?
Our research finds that a low retail cost for a balanced plate meal is £1.12, whereas the low cost to manufacture a balanced plate meal is 50p. If all of that £326 million was reinvested into creating balanced plate meals at the lowest marginal manufacturing price, it would create 657 million meals a year to donate . That’s over twice as many meals provided for vulnerable people than if we spent the same money in a retailer.
17p Average cost per meal to recover surplus food
Low retail cost for a balanced plate meal £1.12
50p Low manufacture cost for a balanced plate meal
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We are all commercial organisations, so even if all those savings were not used, for every 10% reinvested, 66 million meals of good food would be generated for charities.
Industry example Manufacturers Two Sisters, Bakkavor, Greencore and Samworth Brothers all work to identify quiet moments in production to produce huge amounts of food for The Felix Project and FareShare, including cottage pies, pizzas, soups and pasta dishes. These, often one-off or ad hoc runs provide such a large volume of food that it cannot all be sent to charities at once, so cold storage provider Magnavale provides large storage spaces in freezer facilities across the country. This allows The Felix Project and FareShare to distribute the incredible amounts of food as and when required across the network, helping overcome peaks and troughs in both need and supply.
This is not a pie-in- the-sky idea: leading
retailers, manufacturers and providers are already reinvesting in exactly this way and truly collaborating to make best use of
resources across the supply chain.
How can organisations work out where it is best to reinvest? There are two key opportunities to look for: Producing more good food
What are the opportunities to produce non-branded items within your daily/ weekly excess capacity? Each time it becomes clear that there is going to be stranded labour in a shift, could a line be run for minimal marginal cost? This might be driven by daily or weekly order fluctuations through fixed shift patterns that don’t allow full flexibility. Through regular communication with The Felix Project and FareShare teams, even a small from retailers causing an oversupply of labour, or Opportunity 1 Reactive, yet regular
Opportunity 2 Planned
What are the opportunities to produce non-branded items during seasonal or expected downtime? Can you regularly produce extra surplus for The Felix Project and FareShare – perhaps on a quarterly or annual basis?
amount of line time could go a long way to providing a significant increase in food availability. One of the most significant resources required for this idea is people’s time. But there’s a real pride in manufacturing teams: they want to create great products for people so this is an opportunity to engage workforces by enabling them to do the right thing during any moments of down time.
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Collaborating for a thriving industry
Transformation doesn’t just sit on the shoulders of manufacturers. Real momentum to reduce food insecurity requires a united, aligned industry.
Space – Some factories allow The Felix Project and FareShare to use spare factory capacity, for instance when seasonality means lines are inactive. Others provide freezer space storage which helps to address peaks and troughs of supply due to seasonality. Retired assets – Spare packaging and redundant equipment are incredibly useful and save The Felix Project and FareShare one-off costs. Expertise – You are the experts of the industry. Suppliers might not have any surplus products, but they may have an amazing marketing department that could help The Felix Project and FareShare for a few hours a month. Legal expertise, technical, technology and IT advice are also valuable resources. Collaboration – We can all share best practice with other similar organisations, including competitors, through Alliance Food Sourcing.
Everyone across the end-to-end of the food chain – from farms to factories to packaging and logistics – all of us have our part to play in finding ways to save money, reinvest and work together in the most cost efficient ways. Every organisation has unique resources to offer, even those producing no waste can identify surplus factory space, capacity, people and buying power to source food charities need. Resources required to fight food insecurity include: Buying power – Procurement can use their influence to procure ingredients and raw materials at a good cost. Logistics – There may be opportunities to help move items in and around the network when transportation is empty such as returning to the depot.
Industry example The Felix Project and FareShare is working with food group Princes and supermarket Waitrose , aiming to create the best value tin of baked beans in the country. Princes is using its economies of scale to procure the best cost ingredients and packaging and is reviewing how to use seasonal fluctuations in factory capacity to manufacture the beans, while Waitrose is providing funding for the project.
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