City Harvest grows at SEGRO’s Acton Park estate to deliver more food to Vulnerable Londoners
SEGRO is providing additional space to food charity, City Harvest to enable it to scale up its operations across London. The charity will now distribute high quality and nutritious meals to Londoners living in poverty from the 13,400 sq ft space, with immediate effect.
City Harvest collects surplus food from restaurants, grocers, manufacturers, wholesalers, hotels and caterers, delivering high quality, nourishing meals to vulnerable people across London.
City Harvest has redistributed food valued at more than £18 million, for free, to 300 organisations that provide 80,000 meals on average per week to community programmes including homeless shelters, soup kitchens, family centres and domestic abuse refuges.
The upsizing of City Harvest will further extend the support that SEGRO already provided at the start of the pandemic as part of its Centenary Fund, when the City Harvest moved into a 3,000 sq ft unit at the estate on a rent-free basis.
Laura Winningham, CEO of City Harvest, said:
“As this crisis continues longer than anyone expected, SEGRO has been so much more than a landlord – they’ve been a true partner. As we begin the buildout on our new food rescue facility on SEGRO’s Acton Park estate, the SEGRO team on site has been extremely supportive of our work, ensuring that we can quickly be up and running in our delivering food to London’s most vulnerable who need emergency food aid now more than ever.
“We feel that their engagement is making this project go far more smoothly than it otherwise would. We genuinely feel that SEGRO is an integral part of our food rescue efforts in London.”
Neil Impiazzi, Partnership Development Director at SEGRO said:
“Giving back to the communities where we have a presence has been at the heart of our business for over a century.
“We understand that we have an important role to play in supporting our local charities, particularly during such challenging times. This larger space will help City Harvest improve their operations and working practices at Acton Park, so that they can continue to deliver more nourishing meals to London’s most vulnerable people.”
About SEGRO
SEGRO is a UK Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT), listed on the London Stock Exchange and Euronext Paris, and is a leading owner, manager and developer of modern warehouses and industrial property. It owns or manages 8.8 million square metres of space (95 million square feet) valued at £15.3 billion serving customers from a wide range of industry sectors. Its properties are located in and around major cities and at key transportation hubs in the UK and in seven other European countries.
For over 100 years SEGRO has been creating the space that enables extraordinary things to happen. From modern big box warehouses, used primarily for regional, national and international distribution hubs, to urban warehousing located close to major population centres and business districts, it provides high-quality assets that allow its customers to thrive.
About City Harvest
City Harvest, established in 2014, is London’s first ‘last-mile’ food redistribution charity. Rescuing surplus food and delivering to those who need it most, chilled vans form rapid response units collecting food 7 days a week throughout the capital. Free of charge, City Harvest vans collect and deliver 80,000 meals a week from supermarkets, wholesale markets, manufacturers and the hospitality industry. Their trademark fleet of temperature-controlled vans deliver to over 300 London community programmes including homeless shelters, mental health community projects, family centres, children’s programmes, and domestic abuse refuges.