IN Brief:
- Felix worked with B.fresh, BerryWorld and Strawsons to manufacture 20,000 Berry Heroes smoothies from surplus produce.
- More than eight tonnes of berries and carrots were recovered for the production run.
- The project followed an initial trial and is testing how harder to redistribute produce can be converted into products with a longer usable life.
Felix has worked with food manufacturers and growers to convert more than eight tonnes of surplus berries and carrots into a production run of 20,000 smoothies.
The Berry Heroes project brings together juice producer B.fresh, berry supplier BerryWorld and vegetable grower Strawsons, using produce that remained edible but was difficult to redistribute through conventional surplus food channels. An initial trial was completed before the partners moved to the 20,000 bottle run.
Felix teams visited BerryWorld and B.fresh to identify material that could be recovered through processing rather than sent through the usual redistribution route. Some surplus fruit and vegetables can move directly into charities and community organisations, but shelf life, appearance, format and handling requirements can leave other batches unsuitable even when the food itself remains usable.
BerryWorld already supplies surplus produce to Felix and says it has donated about 800 tonnes since 2020. Some berries, however, cannot be redistributed through the same route, so converting them into a drink creates an additional processing stage between the crop and the people receiving the finished product.
Strawsons supplied carrots for the project. The grower has previously sent carrots for juicing and said the ingredient gives the smoothie additional flavour and depth while creating another destination for produce that might otherwise move into lower value recovery routes such as anaerobic digestion.
B.fresh provided the manufacturing capability and itself emerged from an attempt to find a use for spinach damaged aesthetically by a hailstorm. Turning that crop into juice provided the basis for a business that now applies the same processing principle to ingredients sourced from other growers.
Processing surplus into a finished drink changes the recovery problem substantially. Fresh produce has a limited usable period and can arrive in volumes that redistribution networks cannot always absorb immediately, whereas manufacturing can extend the period available for consumption and combine different raw materials into a standardised product.
The Berry Heroes smoothies have a stated shelf life of around two to three weeks and are being distributed by Felix across the UK. That creates additional time between the original surplus event and final consumption while converting bulk produce into a format that can be distributed as individual portions.
More than eight tonnes of produce went into the production run. The trial was led by Felix’s innovation team and funded by Alliance Food Sourcing, a coalition of more than 50 food companies convened by Felix and the Institute of Grocery Distribution.
Alliance Food Sourcing was established partly to unlock surplus that is difficult to reach through conventional redistribution. Waste does not arise only from finished products approaching their use by dates; raw materials, work in progress, specification failures, order changes and cosmetically unsuitable crops can all leave edible material stranded at different points in the chain.
Repurposing those streams requires a manufacturer able to accept variable inputs while still controlling the finished product. B.fresh provides the transformation stage in this project, while Eclipse Labels and Source Design also contributed to the finished drink, extending the collaboration into formulation, processing and packaging.
Scaling the approach will depend on matching available surplus with production capacity, suitable recipes and enough remaining shelf life to justify processing. A product requiring substantial cooking, drying or specialist packaging may demand more resources than a relatively straightforward juice or smoothie process.
The immediate result is a limited production run rather than a permanent new product platform, but it moves food rescue further upstream into manufacturing. Processing becomes a way to preserve edible material before it becomes waste, rather than relying solely on redistribution after a finished product already exists.
