UK food manufacturer Premier Foods has launched its new partnership with FareShare in a bid to tackling food waste and supporting those in food poverty.
The new five-year partnership will see Premier Foods providing food donations directly to FareShare, which will be redistributed to nearly 9,500 charities and community groups in its network. The company will also offer funding, enabling the charity to redistribute food across its network of 31 warehouses across the UK.
The move comes as the Food Foundation revealed 9.9 million people in the UK are struggling to afford to eat, while 9.5 million tonnes of food being wasted across the industry every year in the UK.
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Climate action NGO WRAP also revealed that food waste from homes makes up the highest proportion of waste, with 4.5 million tonnes of edible food going to waste each year.
Alongside the donation of food, the two firms will work together on a number of projects including employee engagement programmes, community initiatives and allowing employees to volunteer their time, expertise and skills at FareShare’s redistribution warehouses.
This will consist of seven separate work streams including food waste, volunteering, commercial activations, colleague engagement, broadening its impact and communication and reporting.
Premier Foods added that it will also partner with its retailer partners and FareShare to co-design creative marketing campaigns such as the Tesco ‘Win a Dinner Give a Dinner campaign’, an on-pack competition on selected lines of Oxo, Bisto, Paxo, Lloyd Grossman and Sharwood’s.
The promotion will also allow customers the chance to win £10 vouchers to purchase a ‘dinner’ for themselves and their family, for each competition winner, £10 was donated to FareShare.
Fareshare CEO Lindsay Boswell said the charity was “incredibly grateful” to be partnering with Premier Foods, adding that the partnership would help achieve its commitment to “deliver the equivalent of one million meals and 1,000 volunteering days a year”.
“Alongside this, we’re honoured to be part of [Premier Foods’] ambitions to halve the company’s food waste by 2030, which aligns perfectly with our mission to tackle food waste and hunger in the UK.”
The partnership continues the efforts made by Premier Foods to tackle food waste, which includes doubling the amount of food redistributed to 750 tonnes last year and achieving zero waste to landfill status since 2016.
