Nestlé Ireland is to invest €110,000 in a partnership with FoodCloud, which will see nutritional surplus food supplied to families in need.

Nestlé said that the investment is being made on behalf of its 850 employees in Ireland. FoodCloud collects surplus food from several big retailers, which is redistributed to more than 700 charities and community partners.

The social enterprise has seen a significant rise in the demand for its services following the Covid-19 lockdown and the demand is expected to grow with the planned scale-back of government Covid-19 financial supports in August.

FoodCloud will use the Nestlé funding to improve access to food that specifically meets the nutritional needs of families and children, which the initiative’s current surplus supply cannot always meet.

Andrew Shaw, country manager of Nestlé Ireland, said that access to food is an urgent problem made worse by the global Covid-19 pandemic.

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“FoodCloud has reported that 68% of their charity partners believe that demand will increase as the Covid-19 payments are reduced. On behalf of our employees in Ireland, we will be helping low-income families access the balance of food they need over the coming weeks,” Shaw added.

“We are looking at a range of further initiatives, whether that’s increasing our regular donations to food charities or encouraging our people to use some of their annual volunteer days to further support Covid-19 recovery efforts in their local communities.”

Iseult Ward, co-founder and CEO of FoodCloud, said that the social enterprise has redistributed record volumes of food to charities all over Ireland since April.

“While this represents a huge achievement for our own teams, it also demonstrates the reality of the growing demand for food in communities, which we are increasingly unable to meet with our current surplus supply,” Ward continued.

“FoodCloud is very grateful for this generous support from Nestlé, which will enable us to work with our community partners to improve access to food that specifically meets the nutritional needs of the families and children they support during this critical time.”

The announcement with FoodCloud is part of Nestlé UK and Ireland’s ambition to help 8,000 families who might otherwise go hungry during the school summer holidays.

Photo: Iseult Ward and Andrew Shaw. (Pix: Marc O'Sullivan)