UK Food Sharing Charity Working with Logistics Partners

Culina Logistics is working in partnership with FareShare – the UK’s largest food redistribution charity – to help fight hunger and food waste. FareShare specialises in the redistribution of surplus food to frontline charities and community groups, who turn it into meals for vulnerable people.

Many Culina Logistics customers have surplus food that FareShare could use, which never reaches a consumer because of issues such as forecasting, mislabelling or promotional items not selling as well as expected. By sending this surplus stock to FareShare, Culina Logistics customers can save on additional costs they would otherwise incur – such as return of food, collection costs for food bins, landfill tax and labour to remove packaging. Through this route, they’re also able to help the most disadvantaged people in communities across the UK and have to-date provided upwards of 446,000 meals.

Sian Davies, Culina Logistics Supervisor who leads the project, commented, “We already have some big brands that have agreed to contribute stock to FareShare as opposed to disposing of it and we are adding more daily. By sending surplus stock to FareShare, Culina Logistics clients are actually saving money. We find that the biggest barrier for food companies sending surplus stock to charities is the cost of transporting it. If making your company’s surplus food available to FareShare is actually cheaper thank disposing of it, then it’s a no brainer. This is what Culina Logistics have made possible for our clients. This is something we want to highlight, so we can encourage others in the industry to follow suit, essentially making it easy and financially viable to do the right thing with surplus food.”

Mark Varney, Director of Network Development at FareShare added “So far 19 Culina Logistics client companies are now providing their surplus food to FareShare which is fantastic progress. The brilliant thing about our relationship is that Culina Logistics customers aren’t just made aware of FareShare, they are also incentivised to work with us.”

Culina Logistics client, Innocent is working with FareShare and has found it extremely rewarding and a perfect fit for their business. Leonie Straatman, Head of Warehousing Logistics at Innocent said, “We recently a hit a milestone with FareShare and have now provided over 1.5 million portions of fruit to people who need it the most. Partnering with FareShare works so well for us that we asked our warehousing partner Culina Logistics to share our process and successes with their other clients, to show them it’s easier than they might think. We’re thrilled to hear that this has brought many more of their clients on board, so that even more food waste is going to people who can really use it.”

Culina Logistics is introducing FareShare to all its customers and has developed a simple process for those who are interested in donating stock to FareShare.

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