There’s not much you can do about consumers needlessly throwing food away

If you want to scale your production to meet these demands, you can’t just look at how to produce more food. You have to address the current state of food loss as well.

From a sustainability standpoint, the global population is growing much too rapidly. About 100 years ago, there were around 1.8 billion people in the world. That number has grown to 7.3 billion today and is expected to reach nearly 10 billion by 2050.

But if you’re a leader in a consumer packaged goods (CPG) food company, this is a fantastic opportunity for your products. With a rapidly growing global population comes a rapidly growing demand for food. Between now and 2050, food demand is expected to increase between 59% to 90%.

We produce nearly 4 billion tons of food globally every year—1.3 billion of which is lost or wasted (nearly 33 percent)! Lost and wasted food is worth $680 billion annually in industrialized countries. Nearly 80% of food loss/waste comes from cereals, root crops, fruits, and vegetables.

As a packaging equipment or food packaging machine, there’s not much you can do about consumers needlessly throwing food away. However, a major part of food loss/waste is produce or packaged goods that have spoiled along the supply chain.

If you can address some of your supply chain concerns, you can put yourself in a much better position to scale alongside growing food consumption demands.