Cold chain companies have a great opportunity to help tackle food insecurity and cut down waste. Nick Hughes investigates.
The task of producing just the right amount of food for sale is a constant challenge for a food industry built on hyper-efficiency and measured on its ability to keep shelves stocked all year round. Inevitably, such a complex and dynamic system produces surplus that acts as a buffer when demand changes, forecasts are slightly out or processes go awry. Each year, it is estimated that 4.6 million tonnes of edible food goes to waste across the UK food industry before it reaches people’s plates – enough to produce more than 10 billion meals.
Now more than ever it is critical that as much of that surplus as possible is captured before it becomes waste and repurposed to help feed those in need. In the UK today, it is estimated 11 million people are experiencing food insecurity. This includes almost three million children who don’t have access to healthy, nutritious food and are worried about where their next meal may come from.
Getting to grips with food surplus is unquestionably a big challenge for food businesses, including cold chain operators, but those that do so successfully can position themselves as good corporate citizens who are helping in the fight against food insecurity.
“There’s lots the industry can do to improve the supply of surplus food and help those in need,” says Tom Southall, deputy chief executive at the Cold Chain Federation (CCF).
“For the past 30 years, food redistribution charities have primarily accessed surplus food from the retail sector in ‘retail ready’ packaging.”
The CCF is working with key food redistribution charities like FareShare and The Felix Project to help identify ways for the sector to support their work. In particular, charity partners see huge value from cold chain businesses lending their expertise in areas of logistics like storage and transportation. This in turn allows charities to streamline their own supply chain operations so they can get more temperature-controlled foods out into the community as quickly as possible.
Schools, shelters, refuges and lunch clubs
FareShare has been working with partners across the food industry for more than 30 years to identify and rescue food surplus and prepare food for redistribution across its network of more than 8,000 charities and community groups. This includes schools, shelters for homeless people, refuges, community pantries and lunch clubs.
Supported by supply chain and logistics specialists, FareShare works with 17 independent regional partners to accept food into its 34 regional warehouses spanning the length and breadth of the UK. In 2024/25, this network helped provide the equivalent of 148 million meals.
A key partner is The Felix Project, London’s largest food redistribution charity, with which FareShare has recently merged. By pooling their capabilities, the two charities intend to create more collaborative and efficient ways of working and be part of a stronger, joined-up solution to tackling food surplus across the UK.
How to help
Cold chain businesses wanting to help tackle food insecurity have a number of options available to them. One is to partner with charities like FareShare and The Felix Project to supply food and/or expertise. Another is to support the quasi commercial/charitable business model pioneered by CCF member Company Shop Group.
The organisation works with retailers, manufacturers and third-party storage and logistics providers to offer a total solution for the redistribution of surplus stock.
Company Shop Group trading director Lee Wood notes how stock can become surplus for many reasons. For instance, it may have a minimum shelf life on receipt, be under or overweight, or have labelling issues.
“Whatever the reason, we have the knowledge, equipment and facilities to make it legally compliant and saleable,” he says.
Using its own fleet of temperature-controlled vehicles and chilled redistribution centre, Company Shop Group can collect, process and redistribute surplus to its stores in just a few hours.
“If partners want a financial return we will pay them for their surplus,” explains Wood. “If they want to create more social value from it, they can donate it to our social enterprise, Community Shop, which helps tackle the root causes of food insecurity in communities across the UK, providing access to deeply discounted food as well as a variety of holistic support services.”
Need to scale
In order to scale food redistribution to match growing need, the industry needs to identify new opportunities to redirect surplus that occurs within supply chains.
For the past 30 years, food redistribution charities have primarily accessed surplus food from the retail sector in ‘retail ready’ packaging. Over the past four years, however, supply from retail has declined by 16%, according to industry body IGD, which is likely linked to retailers improving their own stock management as part of efforts to reduce food waste.
This needn’t come at the expense of redistribution. There is nearly three times as much edible surplus and waste in the food manufacturing sector as in retail finished state, but locating and repurposing this food has historically proven challenging.
The Alliance Food Sourcing (AFS) initiative has been formed with the aim of extracting this previously inaccessible food and turning it into formats suitable for redistribution to charity, often by repackaging bulk quantities or bringing raw ingredients together to make meals.
Convened by IGD, FareShare and The Felix Project, and supported by the CCF, the AFS is a formalised consortium containing the UK’s largest retailers and manufacturers who are pooling resources, capacity and best practice.
More than 50 organisations are already involved with the AFS including the likes of Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Greencore and 2 Sisters Food Group. Less than a year since it was launched the initiative has passed the original milestone target to pledge 10 million meals, with an ambition to grow to 30 million meals a year by 2028.
Nicola Robinson, Alliance Food Sourcing director at IGD, explains how members are looking for ways to capture spare ingredients, surplus and waste, as well as identify spare line capacity, packaging and logistics.
“Anything that can help create food opportunity for those in need,” she says. “By securing contributions earlier in the supply chain, charities can often receive food more cheaply, smoothly and with more shelf life on it.”
Time for chilled
Historically, ambient food has been the main focus for redistribution because it is relatively straightforward to work with. Wood at Company Shop Group explains how redistributing chilled products can present more challenges, predominantly around making sure the cold chain is maintained and managing the additional time pressures due to products having shorter shelf lives.
But he insists neither should be seen as a barrier.
“Our agile, certified systems have been designed to handle significant volumes of chilled and frozen products,” Wood says. “No matter where they are in the supply chain – still at the manufacturers or in the delivery process – we can intervene and stop the products from going to waste, redistributing them within hours.”
The AFS has already demonstrated the viability of chilled food redistribution through the success of several chilled partnerships.
One of these involves 2 Sisters Food Group recovering surplus breaded chicken and repacking it for catering charities. The project has utilised frozen storage and been able to draw down the product at a throughput volume that best supports the demands of the charity network.
Recently, 2 Sisters has introduced a new element to the project in which the breaded chicken can be recovered and distributed chilled in retail packaging, maximising the number of beneficiaries the project can support.
2 Sisters has also partnered with M&S to design a family-size pizza and vegetable curry specifically for FareShare by using cost-efficient manufacturing processes and ingredient procurement.
Elsewhere, in 2025, Sainsbury’s ran an on-pack promotion raising funds to produce 1 million ready meals. The meals were produced from surplus food by its supplier, Greencore, which identified surplus production windows within its operations that were used to deliver a cost-efficient solution.
Collaboration is key
Looking to the future, Robinson says the AFS is keen to work with more cold chain businesses to grow the supply of surplus food. She is particularly keen to work with partners who can help develop innovative solutions for the production, transportation and storage of products as well as offer support in identifying surplus storage and logistics capacity.
“Utilising frozen storage capacity in the industry will allow us to efficiently produce the product, store it and draw down on it at a rate that supports the charity network by levelling out the peaks and troughs of surplus supply chain and consequently maximising social impact,” she says.
FareShare is similarly keen to further develop relationships with chilled and frozen food specialists.
“Specifically, we hope to engage with partners that have shared or spare capacity on routes of mutual use, or regular empty routes, alongside those that specialise in warehouse services, refrigeration and small vehicles,” says Rob Place, FareShare’s head of supply chain and logistics operations.
Whether by supplying food or lending their expertise, cold chain businesses have a critical role to play in making sure redistribution charities can continue their vital work long into the future.
