Food Waste Free United | Value Chain Research into Scaling Opportunities for Circular Pig Feed

  • How we helped Food Waste Free United (Samen Tegen Voedselverspilling) determine the most impactful route for scaling up residual and by-products in Dutch pig feed, based on a value chain study into the ambitions, opportunities, and barriers among retailers, meat producers, and animal feed companies.

9.0 Customer Satisfaction

  • • Exploratory research into the ambitions, opportunities, and barriers for scaling up residual streams in the Dutch pork value chain.
  • • Interviews with strategic players from Retail & Foodservice, meat producers and processors, and the animal feed industry, including analysis and validation.
  • • Workshops to determine the most impactful route: initially pilot projects, ultimately advising the setup of a pre-competitive coalition.
  • • Guiding the coalition toward concrete choices and next steps.
  • Food Waste Free United (STV) is committed to halving food waste in the Netherlands by 2030. (Re)valuing residual and by-products through animal feed is a key route to achieving this: what is not suitable for human consumption can still hold value as a raw material in animal feed. Since 2020, STV has been working on this through a cluster of SMEs, resulting in a number of successful projects. The ambition, however, was to scale up this movement by also activating the major players in the market. The central question: what ambitions, opportunities, and barriers do Retail & Foodservice, meat processors, and animal feed companies see in using and scaling up residual and by-products in pig feed? At the start of the study, the starting point, in line with the cluster approach, was to work toward a number of concrete pilot projects with the major players. During the process, however, it became clear that there was a need for collaboration, and that real impact could be achieved by approaching the question as an entire value chain.
  • Our Approach
  • Been Management Consulting supported STV in the first half of 2025 in exploring the value chain dynamics and determining the best next step:
  • "Been clearly brought together the key points from the various stakeholders, resulting in a clear plan of action.”
  • Karin Roosen. Program Manager, Food Waste Free United
  • Step 1: Mapping the Value Chain Through Interviews
  • We conducted 12 open conversations with the key players in the Dutch Beter Leven 1-star (BLK) pork chain – retailers & Foodservice companies, meat processors, and the animal feed industry, from feed companies to ingredient suppliers – to map out their ambitions, motivations, opportunities, and barriers around using and scaling up residual and by-products in pig feed. 
  • Step 2: Analyzing and Validating
  • We analysed the insights gathered and summarized them into an overall picture, then validated this in a workshop with the project team. The key conclusion was that cost was not the biggest problem, but rather a lack of urgency and direction. Parties were waiting for one another to take the first step. It also became clear that CO2e reduction is the shared ambition connecting all parties in the value chain.
  • Step 3: Recalibrating and Advising
  • Based on these insights, we deliberately shifted the direction of the project. Standalone pilots could remove individual barriers, but not the underlying, systemic cause. Our advice was therefore to set up a pre-competitive coalition that would bring the entire value chain to the table together. This made it possible to create more impact based on shared ambitions – which, as the insights showed, were clearly present. 
  • Result
  • This advice led to the establishment of the Coalition for Circular Pig Feed: a unique, pre-competitive collaboration between three major Dutch retailers (Albert Heijn, Jumbo, and Lidl), meat producers (Van Loon Groep and Vion), and animal feed companies (Agrifirm, De Heus, Duynie, and ForFarmers). Read more about how we have setted up this Coalition in the case: Food Waste Free United | A Pre-Competitive Coalition for Circular Pig Feed
profile picture of Annemarie
  • "We explored the ambitions, opportunities, and barriers for scaling up residual streams in the Dutch pork value chain with key players across the chain, and saw that only a shared ambition makes systemic change possible. That insight formed the basis for the Coalition for Circular Pig Feed”.
  • Annemarie Geerdes
  • Head of Food

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