Reimagining manufacturing to reduce food waste and redirect surplus

How can the food and drink industry reduce waste? When it can’t be prevented, how is edible food identified and redirected to people living in food poverty?

It’s a complex and emotive issue Newton and FareShare, the UK’s largest food waste charity, are unpicking factory-by-factory. We’re then scaling the approach across the industry, with the support of the Alliance Food Sourcing collaboration.

There is wastage in all manufacturing. It’s a natural byproduct of the incredible UK food production industry making high quality, safe food. We’ve all heard of saving wonky carrots and beer companies innovating recipes to use bread crusts. These are just the tip of the iceberg of what’s possible to achieve with the right thinking.

As part of The Coronation Food Project, an initiative inspired by His Majesty King Charles III, FareShare, with the support of Newton’s innovative, forensic approach, is rescuing surplus food across UK supply chains and redistributing it to those needing it most.  

With food banks reporting record numbers of people seeking help and many struggling to afford basic necessities during the cost of living crisis, the first step was to pinpoint where in the food and drink industry the greatest gains could be made to help the most people.

Retail collection is effective, but volumes are declining as retailers improve efficiency and monetise some waste streams. Manufacturing on the other hand represents a significant, untapped opportunity. While the retail industry generates 300,000 tonnes of waste food per year, the manufacturing and primary production industry produces 10 times that, over 1.9 million tonnes of waste (WRAP).

However, reducing waste and redistributing edible, but unsellable, food presents a complex set of challenges which are hard to untangle.

Energy and experience was required to unpick these issues and kickstart collective momentum.

We first really got to know FareShare, understanding its strategic aim to use surplus, fit-for-consumption food to feed vulnerable people by supporting frontline charitable organisations that tackle the cause and not just the symptoms of poverty. We delved into the precise details of how the network collects surplus food from food companies and redistributes it to a network of nearly 8,000 charities and community groups across the UK.

We quickly got to work on this good cause in one of the locations we are most at home – the factory floor for a major supermarket supplier. We used our vast experience to investigate operational hurdles such as sorting, repackaging, safe storage and transportation, as well as issues such as food standards, shelf-life constraints and quality control.

We set up a trial run navigating all these issues which saw 490 tonnes of produce, equivalent to approximately 1.1 million meals, redirected to FareShare, clear evidence of the industry uniting under a common cause and proving what is possible when we all work together.

With the knowledge gained, we are scaling the approach across further retailers and suppliers.

Step 1. Prioritisation

To spot incremental, cost effective, recurring opportunities to extract waste and provide consistent supplies of food to FareShare, we use our 24 years’ experience working in 300+ factories to analyse insights generated by Newton’s proprietary IoT and AI technology, as well as  data sourced from factory systems, employees and managers. This enables us to prioritise our work, creating clear next steps from a complex set of variables.

Step 2. Deep dive

Based on our initial theories and Newton’s experience delivering complex improvement programmes, we conduct dozens of highly focused factory walk-throughs to bring to light what needs to change and how.

Step 3. Unconstrained thinking

We take a step back to ask questions such as:
• If we were designing a new factory, how would it run?
• For a new process, what would the steps be?
• Where are we today, what are the gaps and what can we do about them?

Step 4. Operationalise

We get to understand how to make changes a reality technically but also by engaging the hearts and minds of employees.

Step 5. Financial assessment

To ensure changes are embedded fully, they need to be based on facts and not opinions. We project the ongoing financial impact and present these to senior stakeholders to gain alignment.

Based on this collaborative work, these strategies and successful proofs of concept are now being scaled to retailers and manufacturers across the UK, redirecting surplus food and improving operational sustainability:

Make the business case for change

In an industry with narrow margins, costs are paramount. Most food manufacturing waste is used for animal feed or anaerobic digestion, offering financial benefits. Front of mind for Newton and FareShare is that interventions are financially sustainable. If we suggest extraction and distribution opportunities that increase costs and reduce profits, adoption will be understandably challenging.

Having developed cost projections for specific projects, our next step was to develop a cost toolkit to provide insights into the financial implications associated with saving various types of food in different industries. What is the impact, for instance, if all edible tinned food makes it from factories to people?

This level of visibility is now being used to help engage partners and secure funding from a variety of sources. Powered by this tool, FareShare is now having practical conversations with retailers about reducing their waste in stores and across their supply chains.

Challenge current systematic issues and processes 

By looking at the details of operations with a laser focus we have found opportunities to save significant amounts of food that were consistently going to waste.

For instance, during changeover when producing orange juice, juice with bits in might be washed out of a production line with smooth juice. That juice is safe to drink but has traditionally gone to waste as it cannot be sold as completely smooth or with bits.

Often these types of changes are seen as being the ‘nature of the process’ and are overlooked as they happen so often. They are almost built into standards. It takes fresh thinking and industry experience to spot and solve such ingrained issues.

Rethink grading and specifications 

By working closely with the site operations team, we’re optimising grading and specification processes, rethinking the gap between what is edible and saleable, by:

• Identifying where specifications have been set too high meaning saleable products are being wasted. There is a surprisingly large impact, for instance, of rethinking how many spots can be on a potato.

• Capturing edible surplus that would otherwise be discarded. For one major grocery retailer alone, we’re now redistributing 16 tonnes per month through the FareShare network.

Innovate around redistribution 

Packaging 

• When packaged items are rejected due to minor imperfections or weight discrepancies, they often require relabelling before being sent to frontline charities. We’ve developed an efficient method to streamline this process.

• To tackle food waste arising from non-compliance with the Weights and Measures Act, we’ve created a solution to repackage products into multipacks with variable weight labels.

Processes

• To save unpackaged products, which have been rejected as they are slightly damaged, undersized or oversized products but are still safe to eat, we’ve worked out how to collect, bag and label items correctly, ensuring they can be safely and quickly distributed.

• While this happens, items may not be able to remain in factories, so we’ve developed processes that redirect these products to appropriate storage before being repacked off-site and distributed.

We are developing processes to identify how surplus ingredients can be brought together in the right way to create whole meals, for instance if there is waste pastry at one site, vegetables at another and meat at a third, can it be collected and turned into pies before being distributed? This work is being enabled by the collaboration of retailers, manufacturers, logistics providers and food charities who are part of Alliance Food Sourcing.

Expanding the work already undertaken is crucial, but it must be approached with sustainability in mind if FareShare is to maintain its long-term impact. That’s why another key component of this initiative is building the charity’s internal capabilities, empowering teams to independently sustain their effort. This involves developing a robust framework and strategic playbooks outlining opportunities and approaches for future programmes.

This is just the beginning of what we believe could be a true sea change – a genuine shift ensuring the industry works together to tackle food waste. In line with Newton’s commitment to purpose-driven action, we partnered with FareShare to inspire the industry to reduce waste further and get food to where it’s needed most.
We continue to do this through sharing our learnings, running events that spark new ideas and developing regular content pieces that highlight the real, transformative progress being made.

In March, we are launching a report “The Waste Equation” highlighting opportunities of how we can work together to recover existing waste and galvanise retailers and manufacturers behind an exciting aim – to prove action is financially cost-neutral. Retailers and manufacturers could feed every person in food insecurity in the UK – at no cost to themselves. The causes of food insecurity are complex so it will not entirely solve the issue, but as an industry we can have a huge impact, feeding millions of people a year who don’t have access to affordable or nutritious food.