Page 25 - Food&Drink Business magazine June 2022

LEFT: In 2021, waste management company Suez took a 20 per cent equity stake in Yume, allowing the social enterprise to develop the end-to-end clearance process plug-in.
BELOW: Using Yume’s innovative commercial food waste preventive technology, Lion’s Malt Shovel Brewery sourced 500 kilograms of Kellogg’s cereal by-product to make an IPA beer.
FAR LEFT: It was during Covid lockdowns than Yume founder Katy Barfield realised what was needed to reduce food waste at a commercial level.
FOOD WASTE
includes everyone from discount retailers to industrial caterers, other food manufacturers, airline lounges or community groups.
This diversity in buyers is integral to ensuring food never reaches a dead end. Yume takes this approach to donation too. If a product can’t be sold or is automatically flagged as a donation candidate (through shelf-life rules set by the
avenues, Yume technology tackles the entrenched slipping of food down the food waste hierarchy head on, rewriting the belief that food waste is just part of doing business.
Yume’s users are made up of industry leaders such as Unilever, Mars Food, and General Mills; businesses who understand that purpose-led decisions are the only way forward. Each came to us with
This is why transformation comes in many forms for Yume users. For businesses with immature or fragmented clearance processes, we have seen clearance rates improve to as high as 98 per cent.
Others, with seemingly robust processes already in place, have seen returns soar by 20 per cent compared to what they were pocketing without Yume technology. One company is fast approaching a milestone of preventing 650,000 kilograms of food from going to animal feed or landfill. The embedded environmental impact of this is saving 161 million litres of water going to waste and 2.2 million kilograms of C02 emissions.
New efficiencies have also been gained, with the steps involved in clearance processes dropping by 35 per cent.
Team members have been unshackled from working on clearance and donation entirely to focus on their core areas of the business.
In the donation space, proactive donation management and multiple donation avenues have allowed for 98 per cent of donatable food to successfully reach charities for redistribution.
Systemic change sounds scary, but the alternative is scarier. Five years ago, businesses weren’t talking about food waste like they are today. Some of the biggest manufacturers are aligning with the UN Sustainable Development Goals, signing the Australian Food Pact, or setting their own targets to halve or achieve net zero food waste by 2030.
A purpose-driven mindset means shaking up inherently unsustainable systems and replacing them with new solutions, step by step.
Yume makes up one piece of this puzzle and we are determined to help shape food systems now, for a zero-waste future. ✷
“ A purpose-driven mindset means shaking up inherently unsustainable systems and replacing them with new solutions, step by step.”
manufacturer) it is offered to the manufacturer’s preferred food rescue organisation.
If it can’t be accepted, the donation waterfalls down to alternative charities until it finds a good home.
By opening as many doors as possible to sales and donation
their own unique set of challenges and business goals.
The beauty of technology is its malleability. We often describe our platform as purpose-built, and it is. But a big part of its design is its ability to flex and understand specific needs, user to user.
www.foodanddrinkbusiness.com.au | June 2022 | Food&Drink business | 25