Belgian social enterprise enVie has kicked off a fresh soup production project in collaboration with Colruyt Group to help long-term unemployed individuals to rejoin the workforce.
Other partners in the project are McCain Belgium, Randstad Group, Belgian Federation of Food Banks and REO Veiling, the Belgian vegetable and fruit cooperation.
Battling Food Wastage
The soups, produced in Brussels, are made from surplus vegetables that would otherwise end up as waste. These also include rejected vegetables that do not meet the correct shape or size requirements for sale in supermarkets.
The soups are already available in Colruyt’s 127 OKay outlets, as well as 6 OKay compact stores in Belgium.
The range of soups that are currently available include tomato and basil soup, carrot soup and 6 other varieties of vegetable soup.
The soups contain 40% to 55% fresh vegetables and are sold in the fresh soup section in retail outlets.
In the first year of the project, enVie expects to save 40 tonnes of vegetables from being wasted. It also aims to process 100 tonnes of vegetables in 2 years.
Employing The Unemployed
The social enterprise provides a 12-month, hands-on training to employees to hone their skills as production workers in the food industry.
The internal training programme covers the daily preparation of soups, along with additional training in the field of food safety and hygiene, operating specialised machines, leadership skills as well as personal development.
The recruitment is handled by Dutch multinational human resource consulting firm Randstad.
EnVie has recruited four people this year and aims to employ two to three people each year for the project.
© 2018 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Dayeeta Das. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: European Supermarket Magazine.
