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AFCCC in bid for help to improve the Australian cold chain

 

The announcement of the approval of the $30 million grant to help fight food wastage has been applauded by the AFCCC.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE ANNOUNCEMENT IN FULL

MAY 22 2018
Fight Food Waste CRC Establishment Update

AFCCC Chairman Mark Mitchell and Executive Director Dr Greg Picker have attended meetings of the CRC, assisting to flesh out the bid for funding and offering practical help to improve the management of the Australian cold chain.

A Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) is a national research centre funded by the Australian Government in partnership with industry and research partners to focus on research and development towards use and commercialisation.

The CRC brings together the leading companies, researchers, agencies and community organisations to address the major challenges facing Australia. This Fight Food Waste CRC has a large number of partners, reflecting the importance of food waste to Australia.

The AFCCC has requested that the cold chain be treated separately in the supply chain initiatives under the CRC bid. The delegates argued that the cold chain was a separate activity to shipping dry food or food at ambient temperatures and has a separate set of risks and a much higher loss rate.

Conservatively, and without access to hard data, AFCCC Chairman Mark Mitchell told the CRC that losses from poor handling in cold chain transport could be in the vicinity of $20 billion to $30 billion.

If better cold chain practices were applied in the channels that lose this food, there is already enough data that shows that a reduction of up to 50% in losses is achievable.

Total losses in the complete cold chain are really unkown.

CRC workshops have already identified that losses in the middle section of food distribution, including processing, distribution and food service, are $6.5 billion per year. How much of that could be marked down to the cold chain is unclear. On either side are the farming or food source, and the consumer.

AFCCC wants its stake in the CRC to lead to an improved cold chain that is efficient and compliant with nil temperature abuse and no wasted food.

26 April 2019

The AFCCC is listed as a partner in the first of six projects approved for the Fight Food Waste CRC. The Council will be working alongside the Australian Institute of Packaging on the project - Save food packaging criteria and framework

Read the CRC newsletter about the projects