News

Major UK supermarkets join forces to close food gap

M&S, Morrisons, Sainsbury's, Tesco, and Waitrose are spearheading a joint fundraising campaign this month to support distribution of repurposed food waste to those in need.

The campaign is being organised through the Alliance Food Sourcing (AFS) coalition, and aims to help charities overcome the ongoing challenge of securing enough food to keep up with demand.

According to AFS, 4.6 million tonnes of food goes to waste across the UK's food supply chain every year, due to things like defective packaging or when companies switch over production runs.

Often, however, surplus food is in large or unpackaged formats which are not easily usable by charities. The businesses involved in AFS, therefore, are working to change this.

The food industry’s push to ‘rescue’ edible food

Work is also focused on identifying, rescuing, and repurposing edible food waste throughout the supply chain. Companies are repacking bulk quantities of food waste and bringing together raw ingredients to make meals. M&S and 2 Sisters Food Group, for example, have partnered to make pizzas and ready meals using surplus line capacity and Tesco and Sainsbury's are working with partners to produce cottage pies and ready meals.

There is also ongoing work to salvage by-product during production. UK supplier Barfoot, for example, is recovering sweet potato and squash 'rubble' produced during the dicing process, Premier Foods is recovering and rescuing dried noodle waste, Waitrose is working with its pasta supplier Daybreak to rescue pasta off-cuts, Charlie Bighams is capturing surplus sauces for catering charities, and Morrisons and Myton Food Group have made small changes to their grading process, redirecting 150 tonnes of fresh fruit and vegetables each year to charities.

Importantly, efforts to rescue surplus food from the supply chain versus shelves means it can be distributed much more effectively and consistently, said Paul Baines, supply manager at The Felix Project and FareShare.

“The AFS programme gives us the rare opportunity to plan, as we know what volumes we'll be receiving. We don't usually get that level of visibility, and it has a much longer shelf-life than the surplus food we primarily work with.”

Ambitious targets for 2028

Wheeler said AFS has “ambitious targets” for the next two years, as efforts continue across food and retail supply chains.

Beyond April's major fundraising campaign, and others like it, the AFS wants to rescue the equivalent of 30 million meals a year from the manufacturing sector by 2028, he said. As of 2026, the coalition has already secured more than 14 million meals worth of food thanks to widespread and ongoing support, but help is still needed. “We need food companies, suppliers, and retailers on board to help us,” Wheeler said.

Nicky Robinson, director of AFS, said that whilst it is great to see so many leading food businesses already coming together, more involvement can scale impact. “The opportunity to do good is vast,” Robinson said. “By partnering up, thousands of tonnes of good, surplus food are already being rescued from the food supply chain, reducing waste and providing meals for the most vulnerable in our society–often by making relatively simple changes.”

Food waste and hunger: ‘Let's make a meal of it’

The “Let's make a meal of it” campaign will see the five retail majors passing the campaign baton to one another for the month of April, encouraging in-store and online customers to donate to help fight hunger across the UK.

Every £1 (€1.14) raised will provide five meals for people in need, with money used via UK charities The Felix Project and FareShare that work with 8,000 smaller, frontline charities and community groups.

Money will be spent on sourcing and redistributing meals from surplus food, including to children at youth clubs or during school holidays and people experiencing loneliness who can meet others over a shared meal. In the UK today, 11 million people go hungry; three million of whom are children, according to charity data.

Speaking about the campaign, Joshua Wheeler, senior programme manager at The Felix Project and FareShare, said: “It's fantastic that there is this level of collaboration across the food industry. Companies of all shapes and sizes are built to compete but when they collectively collaborate on issues like this, then together they can make such a huge impact,” he told Ingredients Network.

Simon Roberts, CEO of Sainsbury's and president of the Institute of Grocery Distribution (IGD), said: “We believe that good food should be for everyone and are proud of our continued involvement in this campaign. It shows how working together as an industry can help drive meaningful change and tackle food poverty.”

Wheeler added: “Millions of people are really struggling to afford enough food, and at the same time tonnes of edible food is being wasted in the food manufacturing sector. Alliance Food Sourcing is trying to do something about this.”