For food retail, restaurant chains and distributors, every batch has a clock. When stock expires, the business loses the product, the margin and the cost of handling it twice. Most of that loss is preventable with the right rules and the right visibility.
How big is the problem?
The UNEP Food Waste Index Report 2024 estimates that 1.05 billion tonnes of food were wasted in 2022, about 19 percent of the food available to consumers, with 131 million tonnes at retail level. The FAO estimates that around 13 percent of food is lost between harvest and retail. Part of that loss happens in warehouses and branches, where stock simply runs out of time.
Why near-expiry stock builds up
- Over-ordering: purchase quantities based on habit or minimum order sizes rather than real demand.
- FIFO instead of FEFO: picking the oldest receipt instead of the earliest expiry date.
- Stock in the wrong place: one branch has too much while another runs out of the same item.
- No early warning: batches are noticed only when they have already expired.
Practical steps that work
- Track batches and expiry dates in the system for every receipt, not only on the label.
- Pick by FEFO, first expired, first out, in warehouses and branches.
- Set near-expiry thresholds by product, for example 30, 60 or 90 days, and review them weekly.
- Move stock between locations before it ages, from branches with excess to branches with demand.
- Order to forecast and shelf life, so purchase quantities can be sold within the remaining life of the product.
OPTIAI shows ageing and near-expiry batches alongside the reallocation options to move them in time, and OPTIFLOW applies freshness rules when allocating stock from the central warehouse to each branch.
See it on your own data
Book a demo and we'll show you how OPTIAI or OPTIFLOW applies these practices to your products, locations and supply chain.
Book a Demo