Food and food supply is changing. As resource use becomes more important to the long-term sustainability of food supply and food security of the UK, the need for food producers and food manufacturers to up their game and do more with less is inescapable.
Compulsory legislation is already under way, alongside voluntary codes designed to reshape the sector in short order.
Courtauld 2025 is an ambitious, collaborative action to cut the resources needed to provide the UK’s food and drink by one-fifth within ten years (between 2015 and 2025).
There are three headline targets:
- 20% reduction in food & drink waste arising in the UK
- 20% reduction in the greenhouse gas intensity of food & drink consumed in the UK
- A reduction in impact associated with water use in the supply chain
And the work that goes into achieving these targets is focused on:
- more efficient and smarter production processes;
- educating consumers to change their behaviour and waste less; and
- being smarter about processing and reducing waste and surpluses so that nearly anything that’s not eaten is found another use with a positive environmental impact.
The detail identifies further priorities. Food producers must:
Provide lower impact products that embed criteria to reduce resource use. That means decision-making processes for product design and development, buying and sourcing for priority product categories, and designing products that use less resource to produce or cook
Get more value from waste and surplus food and drink by identifying wastes and surpluses that are currently ignored and matching them to end-uses which deliver higher value. Producers should also help broker links to innovative technologies and new market opportunities
How finance can help address these challenges
At LDF we understand that Investments in infrastructure and technologies will play a key role in delivering on many of these ambitions, and access to finance is crucial to achieving the industry-wide transformation that is envisaged and captured as every business transforms itself. These technologies are expensive and difficult for many businesses to afford as a one-off, upfront cost. An asset finance programme enables the sale by enabling your business to provide a leasing quotation for all or part of the purchase, helping your customer achieve the solution they need within their budget.
This is an excerpt from our Recycling and Waste Management Sector paper, download How Finance can help Recycling and Waste Management Equipment Suppliers to learn more.
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