Kaipara Kumara embraces Countdown 'Odd Bunch' food waste reduction campaign

Kaipara Kumara managing director Anthony Blundell with an "Odd Bunch" bag of kumara. Photo / Supplied

A supermarket's initiative to rescue blemished or slightly damaged fruit and vege from going to the landfill couldn't have come at a better time for one Northland horticultural business.

Countdown's Odd Bunch programme aims to help cut food waste, make healthy food more affordable and enable growers to sell more of their crop.

It packages "ugly" produce, that may not have typically made it to supermarket shelves because of small imperfections or cosmetic damage, and makes them available to consumers at a reduced price.

Shoppers can expect to see fruit with hail spots or misshapen vegetables within the range.

Kaipara Kumara managing director Anthony Blundell with an "Odd Bunch" bag of kumara. Photo / Supplied

Kaipara Kumara was one of the first growers involved with the programme and now supplies about 4000kg of kumara each week for the Odd Bunch.

Managing director Anthony Blundell - who was initially worried about being able to supply enough produce, given "kumara is already pretty funny looking" - said the Odd Bunch represents about 4 per cent of average weekly sales.

"While 4 per cent is a small number, it is great that we are able to pack more of Kaipara Kumara's 2017 kumara crop for Countdown's shelves.

"In a year when the kumara industry's 2017 crop could be down as much as 35 per cent on 2016 because of the cool, late spring/early summer, then coupled with the recent rain [too much] over harvest time, it really bodes well for us to maximise the crop available for Countdown's customers," Mr Blundell said.

"On top of this, reducing potential food waste is also very positive and the right thing to do to be honest."

It was a great initiative from Countdown, he said.

"They were very 'straight up' with us with regards to the concept - saying the kumara that could go into the bag definitely needed to fit the Odd Bunch grade and genuinely would not be fit for sale normally, with bad blemishes/cuts and generally ugly in shape."

It's almost 50 years since the family business started supplying produce to Countdown.

Kaipara Kumara founder Gary Blundell forged the original relationship with what was then Foodtown while he was managing Elfin Mushroom's mushroom production facility in Manurewa, Auckland.

Gary eventually moved his family to Ruawai and phased out mushroom production moving to kumara.

The company remains a family business with sons Anthony and Peter now at the helm, backed by a team of more than 40 staff helping to produce about 6500 tonnes of kumara each year.

Horticulture New Zealand chief executive Mike Chapman said a lot of good fruit and vegetables were thrown away or fed to cattle when they could be sold, making a return for the growers and offered to consumers at a slightly cheaper price.

"Countdown is making food available that would not otherwise be in their stores," he said.

"They developed this programme because there is a range of fruit and vegetables that, while they might be cosmetically unattractive, are perfectly good inside. From our point of view, anything that gets more people eating fruit and vegetables is fantastic."