Culina Logistics provide three million meals for charities

In just two-and-a-half years Culina Logistics (Part of Culina Group), the chilled food and drink 3PL business, has helped redistribute enough surplus food to provide three million meals for vulnerable people in the UK. In May 2017 Culina Logistics partnered with FareShare, to help their food industry clients divert their surplus food to frontline charities tackling hunger, including homeless hostels, lunch clubs for older people and refuges. Aware their clients wanted to send their surplus stock to charities but often struggled with the logistics, Culina Logistics created a simple process that meant food companies could redistribute their surplus food to good causes without incurring additional costs. As a result, 42 of Culina Logistics clients - including brands such as Alpro – redistribute their short-life products to frontline charities, through FareShare. Culina Logistics have in excess of 100 clients including private label and in time would like to get them all involved in redistributing surplus food through FareShare. Lindsay Boswell, CEO at FareShare, said: “By working in partnership with their customers and partners Culina Logistics have reached the staggering milestone of diverting enough amazing food for three million meals. Culina use the phrase “sharing is caring” and this is the best possible example of a business delivering a massive social difference.” Sian Davies, who leads the project for Culina Logistics, added: “I believe that it is our responsibility as a food and drink distributor to minimise food waste within the UK, as well as supporting our suppliers to make diverting food to charities as cost and time effective as possible. Culina Logistics has a four-pronged corporate social responsibility focus: People, Environment, Charity and Wastage, we can help achieve all four by supporting the FareShare and making it easy and financially viable for our suppliers to do the right thing. As we have been able to provide over three million meals in a relatively short time this only spurs us on further to encourage new clients and suppliers to sign up to the FareShare project. Three million meals is a fantastic milestone in a year of celebration for Culina Logistics. We are celebrating our 25th anniversary and we believe that as part of celebrating that achievement we should do our best to give back to the areas surrounding our depots.” David Connor Plant Director, at Alpro, Culina Logistics client, said: “We linked with FareShare last year after one of our employees raised the issue of stock write off and how we could re-distribute the stock instead of sending to scrap. The employee linked in with both FareShare and Culina Logistics to agree a plan of how we would manage the process so it worked for all concerned and ensured the stock was in the right place for the people who required it. The process has worked very well and the numbers we have seen reach the people who require it have been a credit to all involved in the process. I would like to thank all concerned in setting up and managing this process and look forward to continuing to support over the coming months and years.”