We are pleased to announce that we have now appointed a Manager at our new Yorkshire Storage Hub (YSH).
James Carter-Birkinshaw joined FareShare Yorkshire as a volunteer at our Barnsley Regional Centre in 2018 and helped to deliver surplus food to frontline projects across Doncaster. He successfully completed our employability programme, achieving two accredited forklift truck permits, and he then worked full-time in our Sub-Regional Centre as Warehouse Supervisor.
James will now take charge of YSH as Hub Manager and will be overseeing our new frozen food provision. This will take us from providing one tonne of frozen foods per month to one tonne per day! In addition to a 30-pallet walk-in freezer, YSH will host 200 racking spaces to store long dated ambient stock which our Community Food Members can only accept in small amounts over time.
James will also coordinate our food collections by lorry and van, organising where surplus food goes. This will be closely supported by a team of volunteer drivers and operatives under a new warehouse supervisor.
At the same time our Leeds Sub-Regional Centre (SRC) is relocating to Leodis Court as part of this major transition. The SRC will have a much larger chiller and provides a better commute for all our wonderful volunteers.
Our new freezer should start accepting surplus frozen food from partners on March 1st before the launch of our frozen provision on the March 22nd.
Jonathan Williams, Head of Development, said;
“We are really grateful to FareShare UK, WRAP, Sainsburys, Minster Law and our food partners for enabling us to make this exciting transition. Because of their generosity, we have been able to take massive strides forward during the most difficult period in our 22-year history.
Frozen surplus poses a massive opportunity for the vital frontline organisations we serve and over the next 12 months we are confident that YSH will contribute enough food for an additional 400,000 meals across Yorkshire via 70 Community Food Members.”
