FareShare Yorkshire: Working with Logistics Companies to Tackle Hunger at Christmas

FareShare Yorkshire, the food waste tackling charity, is one of the newest members of the LogisticsHubUK partnership. Chief Executive Gareth Batty shares with us some of the excellent work the charity does at Christmas and all year round.

Every day there is a large surplus of food all along the supply chain that will go to waste. This can be down to anything from supermarkets and food retailers not managing to sell it all, to issues in the supply chain and interruptions in distribution, meaning that short-shelf-life food can’t get where it needs to go in time for sale.

That’s Where FareShare Yorkshire Comes In...

FareShare; fighting hunger, tackling food waste. We work with the logistics and retail sectors to help ensure that as little food as possible gets wasted. This often involves our fleet of refrigerated vans going out across the UK to rescue surplus food from suppliers and retailers.

We also have companies delivering the food to us; this can be anything from just one pallet to a hundred pallets. No delivery is too large or small, we appreciate every last bit and will do our best to redistribute the food as quickly as possible, ensuring very little ever gets wasted.

FareShare Yorkshire's Work

Since May 2015 Co-operative Food has been delivering to us daily, totalling over 90 tonnes of surplus food to date. That has created around 150,000 meals. We are working with Tesco in 2016 to launch FareShare Food Cloud, which involves working with Tesco retailers to reduce surplus food and waste. We regularly work with suppliers to help distribute food between retailers, to reduce the amount of food going to waste at all.

How Does FareShare Work?

We rely on the retailers and suppliers contacting us to let us know about their surplus food. Then we can arrange the best way to accept the food from them into our regional centres. We have suppliers collaborating with us on a daily and weekly basis or some that just come as and when there is waste.

What Happens To The Food FareShare Receives?

Our 11 staff and 25 volunteers at our regional centre in Barnsley quickly work to organise redistribution of the food while it is still consumable. This then gets sent out to various charities and community projects such as food banks and soup kitchens.

Christmas; More Waste and More Demand...

Christmas is very much a food holiday. That means larger orders being processed by the supply chain and plenty more food to waste. Supply chains get backed up around Christmas, so our interfood transfers help keep the supply moving, as well as redistributing the extra waste. Due to demand, for the first time ever we are opening our warehouses between Christmas and New Year!

Working with Barnsley College Employability Scheme

We also work with fellow LogisticsHubUK member Barnsley College to help people gain new skills and experience within warehouses and storage. This improves their employability and we help them to seek work in other warehouses and distribution centres locally.

Could Your Company Collaborate With FareShare?

We are always looking to work with new suppliers and food retailers to minimise waste and keep the supply chain moving. We look forward to hearing from you!