Press Releases

It’s ‘Fare’ to Share: Relieving Food Poverty and Reducing Waste

Tillery Valley, the national meal provider to the healthcare, education and local authority sectors, has been working with the national food poverty and food re-distribution charity, FareShare, for over two years, to provide nutritional food to the homeless and needy. Tillery Valley was one of the first companies in Wales to support the recent opening of FareShare’s Cardiff depot by providing both food and training assistance.

As a leading provider of chilled and frozen food across the UK, Tilley Valley’s production plant has the capacity to produce up to one million meals per week. Working with the team’s expert dietitians, each meal is tried and tested to ensure its consistency, temperature and nutritional value is of the highest possible quality within budget. However, when menu changes are made, meals are inevitably wasted. Instead of throwing these meals in the bin, providing the food is fit for consumption, Tilley Valley delivers these ‘overs’ to FareShare who then redistributes the food to some of the 700 community organisations and charities it supports across the UK.

Through the new Cardiff depot, chilled ‘overs’, which usually cannot be redistributed due to their short life at the point of release, will be collected and distributed by FareShare’s Cymru operation in Cardiff before becoming unusable. To further support the scheme Tillery Valley also donates £5 for every pallet of product it supplies to FareShare. This donation, however small, is essential in supporting the training of FareShare’s 330 volunteers throughout the UK and thus is a perfect example of how a little bit can go a long way. Tillery Valley also hopes to send members of staff to volunteer with FareShare at the end of the year to further show its support.

Tillery Valley, Technical Director, Chris Woodbridge says:

“The scheme we have set up with FareShare has proven a huge success and one which we hope to build upon and develop in the future. It feels great that perfectly good food that would otherwise have been wasted will go to a worthy cause, and it is essential that everything we do is aligned to our STOP Hunger campaign and our Better Tomorrow Plan sustainability strategy

He continues:

“We are continually working hard to cut CO2 emissions and food delivery miles, and through schemes like FareShare our recycling rate now operates between 70 and 80% - a result which we are very proud of!”

Keith Manson, FareShare Cymru Depot Director says:

“We are extremely grateful for the support we have received from Tillery Valley so far in helping us to set up our new depot in Cardiff. We hope that by developing our relationship over the coming years, together we will be able to continue to support communities to relieve food poverty.”

Sustainability is high on the agenda for Tilley Valley and the company has many programmes in place, not only supporting the community but reducing its carbon footprint, cutting CO2 emissions and supporting local businesses. The company has recently set up a Welsh Lamb Procurement programme, for example, in which lamb is sourced directly from two local farms thus reducing food miles and supporting local businesses. Although more costly for the business, this scheme further represents Tillery Valley’s commitment to sustainability.

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For further information please contact:

Becci Gould, PR Account Executive, Petersens, on:

02920549597 or bec@petersensone.com

Cerys Palmer, Senior Account Manager, Petersens, on:

02920549597 or cerys@petersensone.com



Notes to Editors

Tillery Valley

• Formed in 1984, Tillery Valley, part of the worldwide Sodexo Group, is a national provider of chilled and frozen prepared meals to the healthcare sector, local authorities and education.
• Tillery Valley is managed by Site Director Philip Hall, Tillery Valley’s advanced production plant has the capacity to produce one million meals per week.
• Tillery Valley currently serves 89 NHS trusts and 26 local authorities in 180 locations throughout the UK.
• Tillery Valley operates to Carbon Trust Standards and was the first food manufacturer in Wales to receive the Carbon Trust Accreditation in 2010.
• Other notable awards and accreditations include Investors in People (2008), Gold Food Hygiene Award (2010) ISO 9001:2008 accreditation for the development, manufacture and distribution of chilled and frozen ready meals and the British Retail Consortium (BRC) Global Food Safety Standard Version 5 Grade A accreditation (2009) and ISO14001:2004 environmental management system accreditation
• Further information is available at: http://www.tilleryvalley.com
• The FareShare / Tillery Valley Foods Supplier agreement was set up in June 2009 following a lead by Tillery Valley’s parent company, Sodexo, in 2008
• Tillery Valley’s produce was the first food through the doors when the Cardiff depot’s doors opened

FareShare

• FareShare is the national charity working to relieve food poverty by redistributing quality surplus food from the food industry to a network of over 700 community organisations that support homeless and other vulnerable people. The charity also provides training and education around the essential life skills of safe food preparation and nutrition, and warehouse employability training through FareShare’s Eat Well Live Well programme.

• Last year, the food redistributed by the charity contributed towards 8.6 million meals for vulnerable people. The charity runs 17 operations across the country and every day 35,500 people benefit from the FareShare service. FareShare is a winner of ‘Britain’s Most Admired Charity’ (2010) awarded by the third sector.

• FareShare Cymru has been established with Cylch to bring the FareShare idea to Wales. Two FareShare Cymru depots now operate in Wales, one in Cardiff and one in Llandudno Junction

For more information visit www.fareshare.org.uk or www.faresharecymru.org.uk
Sodexo Better Tomorrow Plan

• In 2009 the Sodexo Group launched the Better Tomorrow Plan, its sustainability strategy to 2020. This sets out our commitment to leadership in sustainability by helping clients and customers enjoy a more sustainable and healthy way of life, by maximising Sodexo’s social impact and reducing to a minimum the environmental impact of our activities.

• In line with the economic, environmental and social challenges we face, our actions are grouped under three priorities set out below and within these, we focus on 14 commitments.

• Nutrition, health and wellness, focussing on promoting and facilitating the health and wellness of our clients and customers, we develop innovative offers, adapted to our market segments. These are encompassed in Healthwise, our nutrition, wellness and lifestyle philosophy.

• Local communities, we believe that community involvement should reflect our business activities as this is where our strengths and areas of expertise lie.

• Environment, we work every day with our suppliers, clients and customers to reduce organic and non organic waste. Through cooperation and education upstream and downstream, we have managed to reduce our waste disposal significantly.