James toured Greenyard Frozen’s King’s Lynn site with Commercial Director, Brendan Legrove and Operations Director, Neil Winner and was briefed on the companies investment and sustainability plans and support for making use of surplus food.
Greenyard Frozen is one of the largest companies in King’s Lynn based on turnover and turns freshly harvested fruits and vegetables into frozen products. James was briefed on the company’s plans to further improve their environmental sustainability, investment plans including in new chill stores, and their partnership with the charity Fareshare to divert food to community groups.
He was impressed by the company’s progress in making the site on the Hardwick industrial estate more sustainable. During the visit, James heard about Greenyard Frozen’s plans and investment to become more environmentally friendly through measures to reduce its carbon footprint, the amount of water that the site uses, and food waste. He was also shown the new chill store that Greenyard Frozen has invested in to allow them to meet future demand and to retain their high standards. With peas arriving from local farmers in a matter of weeks the site will shortly be operating at its most intense period during the year.
James also heard about Greenyard Frozen’s partnership with Fareshare, the UK’s longest running food redistribution charity, to get more edible food onto people’s plates instead of it being disposed of. Laura Dixon, Greenyard Frozen’s Customer Service manager, who initiated the link with the charity, and Fareshare representatives explained that through the “Surplus with Purpose” they have managed to divert more that 53 tonnes of berries to Fareshare’s network of community groups and charities and enough frozen vegetables for every person in the UK to have one day’s worth of their five-a-day.
Commenting after the visit James said: “Greenyard Frozen’s commitment to deliver quality products while reducing the environmental impact of its operations demonstrates that a focus on sustainability make business sense. It was particularly encouraging to hear how the firms employees are an important source of ideas on how to do more in this area including on reducing food waste. Its innovative partnership with FareShare has helped ensure that a huge amount of food ended up on people’s plates rather than being disposed of.”
Mr Legrove said: “It was a pleasure to welcome James to our site and to show him what we do here at Greenyard Frozen. We took the opportunity to show him round a new part of our factory which we have almost finished building in response to growing demand for our frozen fruit and vegetable products. We also shared with James our current environmental sustainability projects and brought him up to speed on our work with Fareshare so that he could appreciate some of the good work we do in our local community.”
