The UK’s leading redistributor of surplus products, Company Shop Group, has announced that it is opening a new redistribution centre handing frozen products, in a multi-million-pound investment that adds significant scale and capabilities to enable the food and drink industry to redistribute more surplus.
The 73,007sq ft site based in Darton, South Yorkshire, will open in the Summer, and become fully operational by October.
The investment in this new facility comes after Company Shop Group recently announced that it had reached the milestone of redistributing 1 billion surplus items since the business began, and marks one of the organisation’s biggest investments since it moved to its existing Head Quarters in Tankersley, where it processes ambient and chilled products.
Having doubled the amount of frozen surplus handled over the last five years, this new infrastructure demonstrates Company Shop Group’s ongoing commitment to providing its partners with industry-leading solutions that prevent surplus food, drink and household products becoming waste, aligned with the aims of the UK Food and Drink Pact to help build more circular food systems. The new redistribution centre, which is located a few miles from its existing Tankersley site, will process and redistribute millions of frozen food items across the UK through its network of Company Shop ‘Surplus Supermarkets’ and its award-winning social enterprise Community Shop.
Company Shop Group’s new facility will enable the business to create a more efficient process by bringing its frozen operations entirely in-house; providing increased scale to handle more items and implement its industry-leading interventions that ensure surplus is redistributed safely and compliantly. In addition to existing colleagues moving to the new site, the new frozen redistribution centre will mean an increase in jobs with at least five new roles being created.
Chris Burns, group managing director of Company Shop Group, says: “Over the last five years we have doubled the amount of frozen surplus that we handle and this new redistribution centre is a major investment for the future, bringing significantly increased operational capacity. By bringing our frozen operations in-house, we will be better positioned to support our industry partners, creating a more efficient system and a platform for continued investment in our product interventions. All of which will help stop even more perfectly good products from going to waste.”
Martin Upton, Operations Director at Company Shop Group, adds: “The new frozen redistribution centre will allow us to process far more pallets per day reinforcing our unique ability to redistribute frozen surplus at a very large scale. This brings significant benefits, including the opportunity to introduce new product interventions that will enable us to provide even more support to our partners and redistribute more stock.”
The site is being fully refitted before bringing the freezers down to temperature and final testing ahead of becoming operational this summer. Company Shop Group’s primary redistribution centre at Tankersley will continue to operate, handling ambient and chilled products.
