Scale proven concept software to meet UK dynamic food procurement need for public sector

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The Covid-19 lockdown has resulted in large numbers of SME food producers across the country being put at risk if their business was overly concentrated on a heavily impacted customer base. SME primary food producers in the UK need help to reach new customers by diversifying their supply channels. Historically, a very low proportion of SME food producers have been able to access public sector customers due to prohibitive barriers to entry. UK food security is highly dependent on the presence of SME food producers in every region of the country.Our vision for this project is to facilitate UK-wide, SME-inclusive, dynamic food procurement, fulfilment and delivery capabilities for public sector food buyers.Our objective is to divert \>33% of UK public sector food and drink spend to fresh, local produce from sustainable SME producers and suppliers by 2023\.The main area of focus for this project is to transition a proven technology platform that pioneered dynamic food procurement in a pilot project in Bath and North East Somerset (BANES) to scale by making it available for use in all regions across the UK. As such, project funds will be used to accelerate the development of our existing platform:* to be ready to be used in multiple regions* to be used by 3rd party logistics providers* to provide enhanced functionality to manage fulfilment from more SME producers with higher complexity of fulfilment capabilitiesThe Extension for Impact funding will increase the project’s impact and speed to market by further enhancing the system for the 3rd party logistic providers. The additional work will develop a logistic provider management centre allowing these third parties to easily access all the functionality required to successfully fulfil and deliver dynamic procurement orders.Dynamic Food Procurement enables government to procure food directly from a range of primary producers. It enables the procurer to buy food at the point of order with full supply chain transparency. This enables buying decisions on the production of food which, in turn, can enable producers who are producing food sustainably (environmentally friendly, biodiversity friendly and socially responsibly) to grow their business by receiving orders out of the £2Billion spent annually on food ingredients within the public sector. It means that many SME food producers that couldn't previously supply the public sector, can now do so.So, there are multiple benefits of dynamic food procurement. These include:* improved food security, transparency of provenance and accountability within food supply chains* improved performance on energy, waste, social and environmental factors of food production including animal welfare* reduced diet related disease burden* a supply chain to deliver food to vulnerable individuals* boosted regional economies in every region of the UK* improved value and reduced cost for public purse