YUME was recently awarded $366,000 as part of the competitive Accelerating Commercialisation service under the Australian Government’s Entrepreneurs’ Programme. It was my pleasure to work with Katy Barfield, Roslyn Aikman and the team to prepare a plan to complete the end-to-end digitisation of the inventory clearance toolkit for the food and beverage sector to address the $36 billion food waste problem (in Australia alone).
YUME is the only company offering the digitisation of clearance processes in the Australian market working with some of the largest food manufacturers, including Unilever and Mars Food, as well as a notable panel of buyers, including Sodexo and donation organisations such as SecondBite.
Food waste is a $36 billion problem in Australia each year and 17% of the volume wasted occurs in manufacturing sector where slow moving and obsolete (SLOB) stock is perfectly edible but at risk.
Unless these foods are identified and cleared through alternative channels, they might go directly to waste.
The YUME platform connects food manufacturers with clearance buyers and food rescue organisations to ensure that good food do not go to waste. YUME’s novelty lies in their deep integration with food manufacturers processes, strategic buyer partnerships and donation functionality.
Buyers like Sodexo (an international catering firm) for example has strategically partnered with YUME and pledged to buy 300 tonnes of food over a three-year period. Recently, Sodexo announced they completed the purchase of 174 tonnes. The amount represents more than half its 2021 Yume pledge. And decided to increase their pledge even further to an additional 375 tonnes by 2025.
We’re proud to be supporting organisations such as YUME to tackle the food waste problem in Australia and overseas and we look forward to their future success.
