The UK’s food system is under pressure. That’s a fact.
Recent analysis has warned that our supply chains are increasingly exposed to shocks, from extreme weather to cyber disruption, and that resilience must be strengthened across the system. At the same time, manufacturers are navigating rising costs, fluctuating demand and increasingly complex operational requirements.
Strengthening resilience to external shocks is important; it is also critical that existing value within the supply chain is retained. Key to this is reducing waste and ensuring that surplus is captured and kept within the system to allow its value to be realised.
The industry has already made significant progress. Through initiatives such as the UK Food and Drink Pact, WRAP’s leadership on food waste reduction, and a wide range of business-led sustainability programmes, manufacturers and retailers have embraced the food waste hierarchy and prioritised prevention by improving production efficiencies.
Prevention will always come first. But in a responsive production environment, surplus cannot be eliminated entirely. What matters is how it is managed when it arises, and providing reassurance for manufacturers that surplus will be handled responsibly, particularly for those producing own-label goods.
Surplus is often framed as a sustainability issue. However, it is also a resilience issue. When surplus is not directed to the most appropriate route, value is lost and additional operational costs can also follow.
The challenge is not that surplus exists. It arises from fluctuating demand, seasonal packaging transitions, specification updates and the realities of managing short shelf-life products. These are features of a commercially responsive system, not failures within it. The question is how effectively we respond.
Managing surplus when it occurs
With the wide range of redistribution routes available, letting surplus go to waste should not be accepted.
We, like the rest of the redistribution sector, have invested significantly to ensure that even the most complex categories or challenges can be met, with new systems created to meet needs.
Raw meat, for example, is highly regulated and perishable. Strict food safety, traceability, labelling and packaging requirements add operational complexity. Managing surplus in this space requires specialist infrastructure and clearly defined redistribution routes.
Working collaboratively with site teams to identify surplus on factory lines, and how it can be harnessed is crucial; with new processes created to enable value to be retained safely and compliantly. Over the past five years we have helped prevent 39 million units of raw meat from going to waste, demonstrating what structured redistribution can achieve in even the most complex categories.
Bakery and seasonal food products present different but equally familiar pressures. Production peaks ahead of key trading moments, demand shifts, and packaging transitions can leave stock without a straightforward route. In these instances, redistribution provides an additional compliant channel when prevention has done all it can.
Beyond animal feed
Where surplus like this occurs, it would be easy to simply take the waste route or divert to animal feed. However, by following the food waste hierarchy, and using expert redistribution routes, not only is value retained, it also puts the food where it was intended, on people’s plates.
Surplus will always exist in a complex food system, and while progress has been made across the industry, we must continue to find new ways to prevent perfectly good food from going to waste, from all stages in the production and supply chain.
The continued increases in volumes being redistributed demonstrate the collective appetite and effort that is being made, and by continuing to strengthen redistribution routes, alongside continued prevention efforts, we can minimise waste further, retain value and reinforce the commercial, social and environmental resilience of our food system.
About the author
Chris Burns is group managing director for Company Shop Group - a UK leader in the redistribution of surplus products which works with food manufacturers across the nation to transform waste into opportunities for positive change.
Burns joined the group in 2025 from pet retailer, Jollyes, where he served as a board member and commercial director.
Prior to that he held a variety of senior positions at several major UK retailers, including trading controller at Poundland, and head of FMCG at Wilko; as well as senior buying roles at Asda and Tesco.
