New Zealand Food Network

NZFN was set up as one simple solution to two major issues; good food ending up in landfill and the rising rate of food insecurity in New Zealand. Our Founder, Deborah Manning, ONZM, set up NZFN at the beginning of 2020. Drawing on her 10+ years of experience working in the food rescue sector (also Founder of KiwiHarvest), Deborah saw there was a gap in the food rescue sector. Thousands of tonnes of good food was still ending up in landfill. It was clear that traditional food rescues did not have the infrastructure to handle these volumes on their own. For this reason, NZFN was set up to collect, sort and redistribute bulk surplus food and get it to where it’s needed most. With primary funding from the Ministry of Social Development, NZFN is distributing, on average, 600 tonnes of food each month. As a result, equivalent to over 1.7 million meal equivalents being delivered to 64 charitable organisations across the country, including those in some of the most remote and hardest to reach regions.