New Zealand Food Network

It is Food Waste Action Week! While we’re working towards reducing food waste on a large scale, every little bit helps. Our friends at Kai Commitment have created this fantastic and intuitive three step tool that can help businesses identify where food waste occurs, and what can be done to resolve it. No matter where you are on your food waste journey, there is something here for everyone. Check out the link below for more information or to download.

“We’re addressing two problems with one solution.” Our founder and Genesis Sustainability New Zealander of the Year Finalist Deborah Manning, explaining the value of food rescue in New Zealand. Deborah continues to make a real difference for New Zealand communities and the environment through the New Zealand Food Network and KiwiHarvest. We are so proud of the work she is doing!

We were thrilled to have our Food Hub, Feeding Rotorua Charitable Trust visit our Auckland DC late last year and share some stories about the impact that their mahi is making in the community, supported by your donations.   We've been working together since 2020, so it was great to show them around this part of our operation, get a hand packing kai, and learn more about each other’s mahi.   Our mission is to get food where it is needed most, which is why we are so grateful for the work Dave and the team at Feeding Rotorua Charitable Trust continue to do in their community.

We were kindly invited to the 2025 Foodstuffs New Zealand Expo in Hamilton last week. This enormous event is the largest B2B tradeshow in Aotearoa, with 350+ exhibitors and over 5,000 attendees from New World, PAK’nSAVE, Four Square, and Gilmours stores across the country. Our role was to make sure any excess products or promotional items were not wasted and were able to do good. We had incredible support from old friends and were able to make a few fantastic new ones, all who chipped in and supplied some beautiful kai. Together with local food rescue Go Eco (Waikato Environment Centre), we successfully collected 20 pallets weighing just over 8,000 kg of fresh produce, chilled, frozen and other assorted groceries. Our friends at Go Eco distributed throughout Hamilton and we’ve brought these pallets back to our Auckland DC to sort through and spread across the motu. A huge thank you to Foodstuffs for inviting us along to such an important event and supporting us in our journey to get food to where it is needed most.

More than 780,000 kg of CO2-eq prevented this February by getting food where it is needed most! A huge thank you to our incredible donors and Food Hubs around the country for your hard work supporting our communities. 🤝 This year is off to a great start, let’s keep the mahi up!

Thanks to RNZ National for sharing what NZFN and our partners Aotearoa Food Rescue Alliance and our 60+ Food Hubs across the country are up against as a new budget is being worked out. Our sector currently receives $15M worth of operational funding enabling us to collectively rescue and redistribute more than $100M worth of food to the communities who need it most. Without this vital funding, we and others would be faced with the possibility of shutting down or having to significantly scale back our operations. This would mean more good food would go to waste instead of to where it's needed most. We are working with the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) and advocating for the important work of the food rescue sector to be funded on an ongoing basis, as we know the need for food support is not going anywhere anytime soon. Listen in below as our CEO Gavin Findlay and AFRA's CEO Iain Lees-Galloway explain how we deliver a fundamental service at a tremendous value. In the words of our CEO Gavin, "We, both as an organisation and a sector, provide very very good value to government for the distribution of much-needed kai into the community at a (cost per meal) rate that surpasses any other food provision programmes they have." Why does this matter? As AFRA's GM Iain says, "Feeding people is fundamental, if we don't make sure our people are fed, we've got a lot of problems on our hands." 

February has been a busy month for the food rescue sector across the board and our CEO Gavin Findlay has been out and amongst it all seeing some of the good mahi our Food Hubs are doing. It’s great to learn more about the unique organisations in our network, how they are supporting their communities, and how we can work together in 2025 and beyond. A massive amount of gratitude to the hardworking people from; Kaibosh Food Rescue, Kiwi Community Assistance (KCA) Charitable Trust, Porirua/Wainuiomata, Nourished for Nil, The Food Basket, The Salvation Army Napier, Mangaroa Marae. Thanks for doing the amazing things you do!

What a month February has been! Time has absolutely flown by, and to help us keep up we've had great support from some of our lovely volunteers. This month we have had over 64,000kg of products and produce packed by teams from – Fonterra, ANZ, JW Marriott Auckland, Beca, LexisNexis New Zealand and our incredible community volunteers. 💪 We couldn’t do what we do during busy period's like this without the support from these hardworking people. A massive thank you to everyone who came through and got involved this month.

We're pleased to announce that the New Zealand Food Network board has elected Suneil Connor as our new Board Chair.   Suneil has been an NZFN Board Member since the very beginning, bringing extensive knowledge and experience in New Zealand’s food sector to our mission. We all look forward to continuing this mission and growing the impact of NZFN together.   We'd also like to thank our first board chair, David Kirk for his leadership and guidance over the past 4+ years, as well as his pivotal role in getting New Zealand Food Network up and running alongside Deborah Manning and Gavin Findlay.   To find out more, read the full press release below: 

New Zealand Food Network and KiwiHarvest are thrilled to announce that our Founder, Deborah Manning, has been named as a finalist for the Genesis Sustainability Leader of the Year Award as part of the 2025 Kiwibank New Zealander of the Year Awards.   We are so proud of Deborah and are glad to see the work of the whole food rescue sector being recognized as an important part of New Zealand's sustainable future through this nomination. Since 2012, millions of kilograms of CO2-eq emissions have been prevented from entering our atmosphere under Deborah's leadership of both KiwiHarvest and New Zealand Food Network who together, are rescuing good food every day. This impact is still growing and making a difference for our communities and country, and we are honoured to be a part of Deborah's vision.   "Sustainability isn't just about protecting the environment; it's about making sure everyone-especially the most vulnerable has access to basic needs like food. When we talk about food rescue, we're really talking about building stronger, more resilient and fairer communities" - Deborah Manning   A big thank you to Genesis for sponsoring this category and Kiwibank for hosting these New Zealander of the Year awards.