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The first B2B technology to enable food manufacturers to track and sell food surplus, maximising resource efficiency and minimising food waste.
About
40% of food that’s produced never even makes it to a supermarket shelf (WRAP), with the food wasted in the UK supply chain being enough to feed over 12 million people every year. Food manufacturers’ supply chains are complex, driven by many uncertainties both upstream and downstream. This creates inefficiencies, which in turn lead to 100% perfect food being wasted.
To put it into context, there’s 7x more food waste at a manufacturing level vs retail (WRAP) and McKinsey research shows supply chain food waste contributes up to 10% to food manufacturers’ cost of goods. So, if one was to eradicate supply chain food waste, food prices for the end consumer could see a substantial reduction.
DigiCycle is a new technology that helps food manufacturers (i) detect sources of surplus earlier in their supply chain (before it becomes waste) and (ii) optimise how to deal with it by automating data-driven recommendations for the best redistribution or resale path, aligning financials and food waste hierarchy (WRAP). The solution developed will cover all supply chain waste streams, notably food manufacturing by-products, off-cuts, raw ingredients, finished packaged goods and packaging – thus providing increased transparency and improved resource efficiency across the entire supply chain.
Key Benefits
The food manufacturing industry operates with extremely tight margins and the situation has only worsened recently with commodity prices going up, inflation and retailers pushing prices down. At the same time, McKinsey research shows that food waste contributes up to 10% to their cost of goods – and this is where DigiCycle comes in, improving resource efficiency reduces costs relating to food waste and in fact even enables food manufacturers to generate additional revenues from it.
Applications
Our solution currently works for food manufacturers and wholesalers of any size, as long as they operate with an ERP system – we're currently working with large food manufacturers such as Nestle and small such as Belazu. Initially, we are targeting ambient food production, preprepared meals and bakery, since US and UK data suggest that these are the food subsectors with large volumes of ambient surplus ingredients plus food manufacturers of the right size.
We are currently operating in the UK - it’s a closed market that we know well and where Dini, one of the co-founders, has an excellent network.