Social enterprise Yume has accomplished a major milestone by facilitating the sale of over 2300 tonnes of quality food that might have otherwise gone to waste, providing a return to Australian businesses and farmers of over $7,100,000.

With this achievement, the award-winning start-up, founded by food waste veteran Katy Barfield, becomes the largest global B2B commercial tech solution of its kind for surplus food.

General Mills Australia has been a valuable partner in this journey by partnering to sell surplus products, including unexpected stock excess, via the Yume platform since August 2019. General Mills has also partnered with Foodbank to help Australians during this challenging time. Thanks to these efforts, General Mills Australia has reduced finished product waste to landfill by 80% over the last 12 months and been able to help needy Australians at the same time.

4.1 million tonnes of food is wasted every year in Australia in the commercial food sector. Yume connects large manufacturers with commercial buyers in order to prevent quality food from going to waste, and has delivered growth at 150% year on year, including in the face of COVID-19.

“With fluctuating forecasts food manufactures can get caught with excess stocks at times and Yume provides a great service to help clear unforeseen excess products and helps us reduce our environmental footprint. Yume has now become our clearance channel of choice” says Peter Everett, Managing Director of General Mills ANZ.

“It’s great to see a global leader like General Mills committing to zero food waste,” says Katy Barfield, founder of Yume. “Yume’s exponential growth is testament to the need for organisations to re-think the way their supply chains work, and this milestone proves the innovation and importance of our tool.”

Yume works with over 500 manufacturers, including General Mills, Kellogg’s, Unilever, Fonterra and Mondelez, and over 3000 buyers, including independent retailers and industrial caterers such as Sodexo and Accor hotels.