FairPrice at the forefront of fight against food waste and inefficiency
Promoted by Enterprise Singapore (the government agency for business development), the new SS668 standard was first introduced in 2022. It was launched within a public-private project aimed at reaching zero waste in the supply chain by 2025. The Singapore government estimates that about 5% of total food waste is generated in the supply chain for imported perishable products. NTUC FairPrice (FairPrice) has been involved since the beginning of this project, which highlights the group’s engagement with stakeholders and leadership in sustainability.
FairPrice is Singapore’s leading retailer serving more than half a million shoppers daily through a network of over 400 outlets, comprising FairPrice supermarket, FairPrice Shop, FairPrice Finest, FairPrice Xtra, Unity Pharmacy, FairPrice Xpress and Cheers convenience stores.
Safer food
The integrated standard helps to raise food safety levels and reduce food spoilage, as well as enhancing resource efficiency and sustainability. It also helps to fulfil all the sanitary requirements of other South-East Asian markets in case of re-export, with Singapore being the major regional hub. FairPrice supermarkets, fresh food distribution centres, central kitchens and institutional catering are all ISO22000 and HACCP certified.
Encouraging better health and nutrition
FairPrice is also at the forefront of encouraging healthy consumption, increasing its Healthier Choice Symbol options within its house-brand range of food products by about 15% from 2020 to 2021. Over 150 house-brand products are marketed with the Healthier Choice Symbol. All of its housebrand products have been 100% free of partially hydrogenated oil (PHO) since June 2020, one year ahead of the government ban.
The retailer’s house-brand product packaging has been redesigned to highlight the nutritional contents and product attributes, including the country of origin. An array of recipes is now published on social media to further promote the notion of healthy eating.
Sustainability achievements in numbers
- 1,033 tons of fruit were saved through the Great Taste Less Waste initiative, with blemished but wholesome fruit sold at marked-down prices.
- FairPrice has donated more than S$178 million to the FairPrice Foundation to support over 170 organisations.
- S$225,000 worth of groceries were collected through food donation drives at 99 FairPrice stores.
- The retailer has donated S$100,000 worth of fresh produce and two new chillers via the FairPrice Food for Good community fridge to support about 200 households in the vicinity.
- Over 25,500 kg of bread trimmings have been saved from going to waste by being converted to animal feed.
- More than 30 million plastic bags have been saved since the start of the No Plastic Bag initiative in 2019.
- 895,000 textbooks were collected and redistributed or recycled in 2021 through the FairPrice Share-A-Textbook project.
Key figures
FairPrice Group, with a network of online, food service and other retail businesses, achieved S$4.3 billion in group revenue in 2021.
87.5% of the revenue was generated via FairPrice’s retail business.
FairPrice serves more than half a million shoppers daily through a network of over 400 outlets. The retail brands include:
- FairPrice Supermarkets
- FairPrice Finest
- FairPrice Xtra
- FairPrice Shop
- FairPrice Xpress
- Cheers
- Unity
