Three food industry trade federations have inaugurated an online platform aimed at averting ‘massive food waste’, following the shut down of the UK hospitality sector due to coronavirus.
The British Frozen Food Federation (BFFF), Federation of Wholesale Distributors (FWD) and Provision Trade Federation (PTF), have jointly launched the wholesale support platform to collate data on perishable stock which is approaching the end of its shelf life.
Wholesalers can use the platform, which is hosted on the BFFF website, to list details of the top ten chilled and frozen lines they have overstocks on, plus the total value of stock under threat.
Where possible, the surplus stock will be sold to retailers, manufacturers and surplus food redistributors, or given away to charity.
According to BFFF, within a few hours of the platform going live, over £2 million worth of food had been registered.
Commenting on the launch, BFFF’s CEO Richard Harrow said: “Since the closure of the hospitality sector, the supply chain into the Out of Home market is overstocked with chilled products that are fast approaching the end of their shelf life.
“Our federations urgently need to understand the scale of the problem we are facing so that we and other trade bodies can find ways to help the industry deal with this stock and mitigate a potentially shocking amount of food going to waste.”
Urging businesses to upload their data, Harrow added: “All three federations are making strong representations to government to ensure that if our industry takes this action, there will be some form of recompense for the inevitable financial losses that will occur.”
The announcement follows on from BFFF’s recent launch of a transport support platform, which matches unused temperature-controlled vehicles with food manufacturers looking to launch food delivery services, after seeing business decline in the wake of Covid-19.
By Antonia Garrett Peel
Source: FoodBev
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