Aiming for zero food waste

According to UN figures, roughly one third of the food produced in the world for human consumption every year — approximately 1.3 billion tonnes — gets lost or wasted. The total volume would take up more surface than China. As a food producer, LLBG wants to do its bit to tackle this global issue by aiming for zero food waste.
First of all, with our frozen bakery products we help our clients in reducing the risk of food loss, whether they have a store, restaurant or sandwich bar. They can quickly and flexibly adapt to the demand by baking off only what they need, depending on how many customers come by that day. Our frozen bakery products allow for better portioning and also have an extended storage life. Just a quick thaw, followed by re-heating or baking, and that’s it.
 
First of all, with our frozen bakery products we help our clients in reducing the risk of food loss, whether they have a store, restaurant or sandwich bar. They can quickly and flexibly adapt to the demand by baking off only what they need, depending on how many customers come by that day. Our frozen bakery products allow for better portioning and also have an extended storage life. Just a quick thaw, followed by re-heating or baking, and that’s it.
 
Next to that, we also try to give food surpluses in our own bakeries a second life. They often contain plenty of valuable components that still are useful in various ways:

Human consumption

We try to donate food surpluses as much as we can to local organisations such as the Foodbanks, Les Restos du Coeur or Public Centres for Social Welfare. The quality of these surpluses is guaranteed at all time and complies to all standards for human consumption. In the Netherlands for example, Tarte-à-Moi cakes that haven’t been sold in time at the Albert Heijn supermarkets but are still edible, are donated to local foodbanks.

In some cases, we find another different destination for our food surpluses. In our Antwerp fresh bakery plant (Belgium), part of the bread surpluses are processed to bread crumbs for human consumption, another part is donated to local foodbanks, and the rest is processed as animal feed.
 
Human consumption

Animal feed

All Belgian LLBG plants are certified Food Chain Alliance (FCA) to ensure that bakery surpluses are eligible for processing as animal feed. Regular audits guarantee the quality of the animal feed.
Some examples: LLBG supplies its bread crumbs to a local fishmonger who uses it as fish feed. And
also the elephants in the Pairi Daiza Zoo in Belgium are weekly fed by LLBG surpluses. In Romania, all product and dough waste goes to a pig farm.
 
Animal feed