Following the hardships of the last two years with Covid, the KZN looting and flooding; not to mention the rise in fuel and food prices, vulnerable South Africans remain in dire need of food support.
We would like to extend our grateful thanks to the following donors, for enabling us to rapidly scale up our fleet through their sponsorship contributions; Lancaster Foundation, Massmart, Phillip Morris International, Glencore, and Unitrans.
Our growing fleet enables us to recover more food on demand, ensuring that quality edible food is diverted away from landfills, and we can use this good food to address growing food insecurity. The refrigerated fleet also allows us to adequately maintain cold chain integrity during the recovery, storage, and distribution of perishable surplus food items.
To expand our reach, last month two new 8-ton refrigerated trucks arrived at our Cape Town warehouse. At the beginning of July, another two refrigerated trucks with trailers arrived at our Durban warehouse, both with a 17-ton load capacity that can carry a around 20 pallets of food, allowing for greater operational efficiency.
With a presence across all nine provinces in South Africa, our trucks spend a huge amount of time on the road, collecting good quality surplus food from farmers, various manufacturers and retailers. In addition, we manage School Breakfast Programmes nationally for 2 large corporates – Kellogg’s and PepsiCo, which involves various creches, and primary and secondary schools across the country. Through our Mobile Rural Depot (MRD) programme, our trucks travel thousands of kilometres every month, to deliver essential nutritious food provisions to 29 rural depots that support hundreds of towns and villages across the country, reaching over 165,000 vulnerable people. Our rural reach is set to grow as we plan to set up between five and eight new MRDs between July and the end of the financial year.
We wouldn’t be able to travel these long distances to reach the most vulnerable people without our generous fuel donor, Engen. Thank you, Engen, for your partnership and support of our foodbanking operations!