Definition:
Fruit & vegetables that are at risk of being thrown away due to extraordinary situations.
Example: A buyer has purchased too much, products with a short expiration date, a pallet that overturned, a delayed container, a saturated market, a bad orange in a net that causes the entire net to be thrown away.
Or
Continuous residual flows/side streams from food industries that are not taken care of.
Examples: apple cores from core production, half peas that are sorted out, too large beets, straight bananas.
Why does salvaged fruit sometimes cost more?
The raw material itself doesn't cost much, but the handling does. Ultimately, salvaged raw materials are often more expensive than if we had bought “regular” fruit in bulk.
We have three cost drivers:
- Hand sorting . Everything must be looked through, nets of oranges must be split, bad fruit must be separated from good, berries in boxes must be sorted. The hand application is sometimes extreme.
- Flexibility . We never know when and what we will get in. We work ad hoc and must be able to handle everything from beetroot in 1000 kg bags to small 150g boxes of strawberries.
We are fast-paced and make small series, which in turn costs money. - Logistics . The raw materials are found in all sorts of places. Wholesale warehouses, fruit ports, farms, fruit basket companies, logistics centers. We have to pick up quickly and be agile.
