Fridge focus of £20m Asda charity pledge

UK: Asda is to invest at least £20m in developing the infrastructure of food redistribution charities FareShare and The Trussell Trust.

FareShare operates a distribution network for food donations and The Trussell Trust are the UK’s biggest operator of foodbanks. Together, the new partnership is designed to help one million people out of food poverty over the next three years.

Refrigeration will be a major target for investment as both charities are currently reliant on tinned and packet foods due to a lack of chilled transport and storage.

Asda has also committed to making sure all of its shops are able to donate surplus food to food banks by 2020.

The partnership will enable FareShare and The Trussell Trust to provide an additional 24 million meals every year, give 500,000 more people access to fresh food in the UK and help one million people get themselves out of food poverty over the next three years.

In a blog post published this morning, Andy Murray, Asda’s chief customer officer, said: “Right now, in the UK 8.4 million people are struggling to afford to eat. One in 10 people in the UK are missing meals to pay their bills – and one in four of those are children. And yet, four million tonnes of perfectly decent food is wasted each year in the UK. We simply cannot – and will not – accept food being wasted whilst people in our communities go hungry. We’ve listened to our customers and want to take on their challenge to fight hunger and create change.”

Lindsay Boswell, chief executive of FareShare UK, said: “I believe that Asda’s investment in tackling hunger and food waste in support of front line charities has the potential to create such a multiplier effect that it could well be the largest single act of support since the creation of the National Lottery or the introduction of Gift Aid.”

Sam Stapley, head of operations for The Trussell Trust England, added: “The scale and nature of this funding is unprecedented. Asda’s investment means they can expand their reach and develop new projects bringing very real, tangible benefits to local communities and to anyone struggling with food insecurity in a way that simply has not been possible before.”