Blackpool Big Food Project foodbank ‘could close without support’

An emergency meals charity that sends meals to foodbanks throughout Blackpool has mentioned it may face closure with out assist to maintain its companies operating.The Large Meals Mission is a redistributor of surplus meals from supermarkets and producers to 125 foodbanks, colleges, group kitchens, disaster companies and households throughout Blackpool, Fylde and Wyre.It mentioned it urgently wanted assist to maintain its three vans on the highway, its warehouse open and meals reaching those that want it most via its 150 volunteers.”Final week we put 17,600 meals out of the warehouse,” founder Neil Reid mentioned. “However we want folks to volunteer, we want meals, and likewise we want chilly, laborious money.”The non-profit organisation began as Blackpool Meals Financial institution in February 2012 “as a result of there was a necessity within the city round our kids’s centres, and that want has simply received larger and larger”, he mentioned.”We’re not asking for something for us, that is concerning the people who we serve.”We’ve simply consistently tried to succeed in additional and do extra.”Mr Reid mentioned that within the first 12 months “we began off with 4,360 meals in a 12 months which we thought was fabulous, this 12 months that is about 900,000.””We shift about 50 tonnes of meals a month so we want a facility the place we are able to transfer meals in and transfer meals out to get it to the folks which can be reliant on us,” he added.”We serve 125 charities, 90 of these on common entry us each week to serve the folks that they are serving, so it is a massive operation.”He mentioned demand went up “exponentially due to Christmas” and lots of 1000’s in Blackpool and the encircling space would “go hungry” if it couldn’t hold going.