Logistics can reduce food waste

2023-08-15 19:27:51

The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) published a study on global food waste. According to the survey, one third of the food produced on the planet is not well used. Waste occurs at all stages through which products pass, especially in low- and middle-income countries.

Researchers estimate that if the situation continues to progress as it is today, around 2.1 billion tonnes of food will be lost or wasted by 2030 – the equivalent of US$1.5 trillion, while a tenth of the population will be starving.

To avoid worsening the situation, BCG warns of the need for greater cooperation between producers and processors of the raw material, as well as better storage techniques, preventing the products from spoiling before reaching supermarkets. The solutions also involve training agricultural producers to improve handling and harvesting, speeding up transportation from the distribution center to the store, and reviewing internal processes to find bottlenecks.

Logistics can be a competitive differentiator

Faced with the great growth of the world’s population in recent decades, companies aimed at providing agro-industrial products constantly seek to increase their productive capacities to meet such demand. At the same time, the challenges of the food sector include measures that manage to minimize losses during the distribution process.

According to the director of the GPS Group’s logistics division, Jazeel Santos, logistics plays a key role in optimizing the flow of food and ensuring that it is distributed and consumed in a more sustainable way, from production to final consumption, minimizing waste by along the entire chain. “Low-process agro-industrial products, for example, generally have a reduced shelf life, making the logistical processes of storage and transport essential for the competitiveness and health of the business”, he declares.

According to Jazeel Santos, the GPS Group aims to help companies in the agro-industrial sector with solutions to the challenges mentioned above, supporting them with the use of industry 4.0 technologies, as well as with methods and processes through benchmarking – strategy which seeks to optimize performance and adopt the best practices of other more developed industrial branches.

In 3PL logistics, also known as outsourced logistics, operators are responsible for transport and storage and, in turn, for the management and organization of both activities. Several logistical strategies can be used to reduce food waste and maximize the use of available resources. Some of these include demand planning; stock management; quality control and technology and innovation.

“The use of advanced technologies, such as smart sensors, GPS tracking and mobile applications, can improve logistics efficiency, facilitating communication between producers, retailers and consumers, as well as the early detection of products close to expiration”, explains the director of logistics division of the GPS Group.

According to Jazeel Santos, effective logistics guarantees, to agricultural production, that food reaches consumers with quality, in a timely manner and at a reasonable cost. “For Brazil, a country with continental dimensions, the main challenge for the flow of production concerns the transport of production. The GPS Group can provide tailor-made projects to meet the challenges of transportation and production storage”, he concludes.

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