AMT Fruit has hit the milestone of providing more than one million meals worth of surplus fruit to food redistribution charity FareShare.
The company is part of the Munoz group and the core supplier of citrus to Tesco. Following an introduction brokered by Tesco in 2015, AMT Fruit has regularly supplied FareShare with any citrus fruit they cannot sell as originally intended due to variations in forecast or the produce being out of specification or packaged incorrectly.
FareShare redistributes this surplus fruit to frontline charities and community groups across the UK that support vulnerable people, providing a vital source of nutrition to people who would otherwise struggle to access fresh produce.
To date, over 1,700 individual charities have directly benefitted from AMT’s surplus fruit, according to FareShare.
Naomi Pendleton, head of technical at AMT Fruit, said: “Fresh produce suppliers are constantly looking for ways in which to put their surplus stock to good use and reduce their food waste each year.”
She added: “FareShare has helped us hugely in working towards this target and in 2017 alone we reduced our food waste total in the UK by some 280 tonnes, representing a 10 per cent reduction overall.”
As one of Tesco’s dedicated suppliers, AMT Fruit recently signed up to the Sustainable Development Goal Target 12.3, which aims to halve per capita food waste at the retail and consumer levels by 2030, as well as reducing food losses along production and supply chains, including post-harvest losses.
FareShare's chief executive Lindsay Boswell commented: “AMT Fruit has been supporting FareShare with regular deliveries of surplus fruit for over two years now.
“Fresh fruit is always a top priority for FareShare to source and with such great nutritional value, it is really welcome by the charities we supply.
“We greatly appreciate the support from everyone at AMT Fruit and look forward to working even closer together in the future.”
