THE KING WILL OPEN THE FIRST TWO CORONATION FOOD HUBS TO MARK HIS MAJESTY’S 76TH BIRTHDAY
Thursday 14th November 2024
In celebration of His Majesty’s 76th birthday and the first anniversary of the Coronation Food Project, The King will open the initiative’s first two Coronation Food Hubs – one in person and one virtually.
The hubs – major distribution centres, designed to save and circulate tonnes of surplus food – are set to transform the ability of charities like FareShare and the Felix Project to support communities in need.
To mark His Majesty’s birthday and the opening of the two facilities, the hub the King is visiting will host a ‘surplus food festival’ with meals created from food which would otherwise have gone to waste. His Majesty will tour the new facility, meeting beneficiaries and representatives of food banks, schools and community groups.
The Coronation Food Project is investing in a network of hubs, adding scale and capacity to warehouses, boosting cold storage facilities and funding lorries, vans and drivers to boost their distribution capacity. For example, a newly installed industrial freezer, which the King will view during the visit, will increase capacity by 400%, significantly improving the charity’s ability to preserve more surplus food.
The Coronation Food Project
The Coronation Food Project, inspired by His Majesty The King and coordinated by His Majesty’s charitable fund, King Charles III Charitable Fund (KCCF), seeks to bridge the gap between food waste and food need across all four nations of the United Kingdom, helping people and helping the planet.
There are three pillars to the Coronation Food Project:
1) Saving more surplus food.
2) Supercharging food distribution networks to ensure surplus produce can reach those who need it most, through the creation of a network of Coronation Food Hubs.
3) Delivering a flexible funding programme to support the wider sector and a consortium of pioneering food-rescue initiatives. In just twelve months, remarkable progress has been made towards reaching the project’s three goals.
Working with charities FareShare and the Felix Project, along with leaders from across the food industry, the Coronation Food Project has already saved an additional 940 tonnes of surplus food – equivalent to 2,240,000 meal portions.
£15 million has been raised to design, build and run a network of up to ten Coronation Food Hubs across the UK.
The Coronation Food Project has also given £715,000 in community food grants to 33 organisations across the UK. This includes a grant to East Belfast Mission which runs a range of food related projects, including a daily community fridge for people to come each week to collect high quality fresh surplus produce and UKHarvest’s Grub Club which involves pupils and parents in distributing surplus food to schools.
