Will new Alliance Food Sourcing collaboration finally tackle food waste?

When The Grocer launched its Waste Not Want Not campaign against food waste back in 2016, one of the saddest elements at the time was the lack of co-ordination and co-operation in the industry’s efforts to help tackle the problem.

Not only was the food and drink industry missing a chance to redistribute tens of millions of meals-worth of perfectly edible food, but large sections of the supply chain were either in denial of the crisis altogether or failing to do anything meaningful to tackle it.

That’s why today, with a little help from King Charles, it’s so welcome to see the joined-up action being taken by the UK’s leading supermarkets and manufacturers with the launch of the new Alliance Food Sourcing (AFS) operation, as exclusively revealed today by The Grocer.

While the king’s visit to a new food hub in Deptford, a year on from the launch of his Coronation Food Project, will rightly be the focus of much attention (along with another virtual opening of a second hub in Knowsley, Merseyside), it is the launch of this new body – and a new way of working when it comes to food surplus – which could prove transformative in the way the UK fights food waste and hunger.

Action, not words

First off, it’s significant that CEOs of the UK’s biggest food companies, including Sainsbury’s, Tesco, M&S, Greencore and 2 Sisters, are personally leading on the project.

But it’s particularly notable that they are doing so, not just with words, but action.

As George Wright, the outgoing chief executive of FareShare, who was instrumental in setting up this project, says: “This isn’t just some charter, it’s not just words. This is actual companies investing in a new system which will change everything.”

AFS, whose initial funding comes from 15 of the UK’s biggest food and drink companies, will sit within the IGD. There, it will oversee a systemic new way of redistributing food surplus involving levels of cooperation previously unheard of across supply chains, involving retailers, manufacturers, logistics providers, lawyers and consultants.

Food waste gamechanger

If it works, the complex network of support is not what the millions in food poverty will see. They will instead be presented with millions of extra meals generated from products, individual ingredients and packaging initially destined for the bin but instead used in innovative and collaborative ways. In 2016 this would have seemed like a pipe dream.

Perhaps wisely, the industry has not set a target for the amount of extra food that it plans to generate from the initiative, but it clearly has the potential to permanently change the face of food surplus.

Yet despite all the hard work it has taken, inspired by the king and the leadership of charities like FareShare and The Felix Project, this is still only the start.

Today’s appeal from Matthew Barnes, Simon Roberts, Alex Freudmann, Ranjit Singh Boparan and Dalton Philips in their launch letter in The Grocer is a plea for hundreds of other companies to sign up and look at how they can be part of the operation.

The big question now is whether the wider industry will answer the call?