Food rescue charity, SecondBite, has started building a 1500 square metre cool room and freezer facility at its Derrimut warehouse in Melbourne’s west, as retailers send more surplus fresh produce to food relief.
The facility will let SecondBite receive, store and process significantly larger volumes of surplus fresh produce, as major retailers direct more unsold and imperfect stock to food relief rather than disposal. Builder, Harris HMC, is delivering the project, with completion expected by the end of the first quarter of 2027.
Supply chain consultancy TMX Transform is providing construction project management pro bono. The cost of the build has not been disclosed.
Unlike a retail or commercial distribution centre, SecondBite has almost no visibility of what stock will arrive on a given day. The facility has been designed for flexibility and surge capacity rather than a planned flow of goods.
SecondBite has rescued 26.8 million kilograms of surplus food in 2026, the equivalent of 53 million meals. The charity says 94 per cent of the charities it supplies have seen demand rise on the previous year, driven increasingly by working families and dual-income households.
TMX Transform co-founder and COO, Milan Andjelkovic, said, “Because SecondBite’s stock is donated surplus rather than planned procurement, they have little visibility over what volume or product will arrive on any given day. Designing a facility around that kind of variability, rather than a predictable flow of goods, requires a different approach,”.
SecondBite CEO, Daniel Moorfield, said, “The need for food relief is growing, but at the same time there is more good food available that can be rescued and redirected to people who need it. The challenge is having the infrastructure and capacity to handle that food safely and efficiently,”
“This new facility will significantly increase our ability to receive and store fresh produce and other surplus food, helping us get more nutritious food out to our charity partners and the communities they support.”
The build follows the Foodbank Hunger Report 2026, which found 3.6 million households experienced food insecurity in the past year, with 69 per cent of them experiencing it for the first time.
SecondBite is one of four major food rescue organisations sharing $20 million in federal funding over five years, which the government pointed to in March when it rejected a food donation tax offset for producers and manufacturers.
