Since January 2009 we’ve undertaken confidential reviews in 13 FDF member companies and, working with their manufacturing staff, have identified opportunities for improvement. If the savings opportunities we identified in these 13 companies were rolled out across the whole FDF membership, these food and drink companies could achieve cost savings of over £67 million.

We are working with major food manufacturers to investigate the potential for supply chain savings through the introduction of PRP. We’ve seen multiple examples of traditional goods-in areas where high volume goods were delivered from suppliers in standard 25kg sacks which then had to be slit, decanted and weighed out into batch sizes. This is a source of waste that PRP can remove permanently by addressing the root cause.

In 2010 we led a major project to install and trial a self-service, refillable, laundry product dispenser in five ASDA stores. We have extensive knowledge of various competing systems worldwide and we are working with a major brand owner on systems designed to offer formulation at the point of sale.

Anaerobic digestion is the treatment technology of choice for many waste foods in the supply chain. We prepared a report on the quantity of UK wide food wastes from each part of the supply chain on behalf of Courtauld Commitment member companies. We have also advised Marks & Spencer on new waste management contracts to achieve their 2012 Plan A targets.

Glass is the packaging material of choice for some foods and beverages, but it’s under challenge from plastics and laminates. We have developed protocols to calculate the recycled material content for both glass and plastics used in food and drink packaging.