Last Mile and Food Safety: Last Mile Safe Food Delivery project starts

Wenda and 8 partners join forces to improve Food Safety in the proximity economy

"Last Mile Safe Food Delivery" starts: it is one of the winning projects in the call for solutions "Innovations for the proximity economy" promoted by the Chamber of Commerce of Milan Monza Brianza Lodi to identify solutions for companies in the last mile ecosystem, with the aim of testing innovative solutions to improve Food Safety in the last mile logistics sector.

The project launched by Wenda, the collaborative platform that provides visibility of supply chain processes and product tracking, including from farm to fork, supporting the most common tracking, visibility and monitoring technologies, is in collaboration with 8 other partners.

This will be an opportunity to deploy Wenda's proprietary technology in last mile logistics to improve food safety in the industry. In fact, the objective of the call for solutions is to identify and disseminate innovative solutions for "proximity" businesses in the trade, tourism, services and handicraft sectors that are facing digital transformation and have suffered major losses and changes in working conditions due to Covid-19.

The "Last Mile Safe Food Delivery" project: Wenda and its partners

The "Last Mile Safe Food Delivery" project aims to test the use of Wenda's proprietary technology in last mile logistics to improve Food Safety in the industry by tracking and leveraging temperature and track & trace data from producer to final consumer. Wenda will position itself as a standard technology platform, integrated with last mile logistics providers and merchants, that will help make certified deliveries.
Wenda currently has 8 project partners, including 5 companies - 2 logistics players and 3 merchants- and 1 non-profit association:

PonyU, an innovative start-up that operates in the logistics market of urban deliveries by implementing innovative services through a proprietary technology. PonyU allows all types of merchants to offer their customers an advanced home delivery proposal, integrating e-commerce, picking and delivery.

FOODLOGICA, a social enterprise that performs zero-impact B2B deliveries for food producers, restaurants and e-commerce, focusing on the last mile. It uses electric transport vehicles adapted with active refrigeration boxes and peri-urban sorting hubs.

Babaco Market, the first anti-waste food delivery service in Italy, active with the project on Milan city, which allows consumers to buy and save fruits and vegetables that for small aesthetic defects are not accepted by traditional distribution channels such as supermarkets, and therefore risk being wasted.

Gelmarket, a chain of stores where consumers can find exclusive Picard-branded products and an assortment of over 1000 frozen foods, from appetizers to desserts, with the possibility of home delivery.

Orapesce, an e-commerce service that sells fresh fish already processed and cleaned, respecting the seasonality of the product. By choosing the day and time of delivery, the order will be delivered directly to your home, through temperature controlled shipments.

The Associazione Banco Alimentare della Lombardia “Danilo Fossati” Onlus, part of the Banco Alimentare Network made up of 21 organizations throughout Italy and the Banco Alimentare Onlus Foundation. The mission is the recovery of surpluses from the agri-food chain (agricultural and industrial producers, distribution and catering) to distribute them free of charge to partner charities committed to supporting people in food poverty.

Retail Hub, the first Business Accelerator that gives Brands and Retailers the chance and opportunity to stay up-to-date on innovation and connect with the best technology and digital start-ups / scale-ups, worldwide.

Department of Veterinary Sciences for Food Production, Health and Safety "Carlo Cantoni" VESPA, which will participate through Professor Claudia Balzaretti, expert in Food Safety, and Dr. Marta Castrica, who will play an advisory role for part of the project.

Project objectives

The operation will guarantee different outputs: for logistics players, food safety and market KPIs to assess the service level of last mile logistics and measure its efficiency, food safety best practices for logistics service providers; for merchants, standard and integrated technology in the last mile to optimize service levels, creating awareness and greater guarantees of consumption; for final consumers, a "Certificate of Control" of Food Safety, available for each delivery.

Wenda will be able to refine some attributes of its universal and collaborative Platform that allows to manage temperature and traceability data, collecting, analyzing and sharing them automatically with all the actors of the supply chain.
"We are very pleased, this funding represents a great starting point for the enhancement of our Platform to support the many proximity businesses engaged in digital transformation. We thank the Chamber of Commerce Milan Monza Brianza Lodi for the trust expressed to us, the contribution will allow us to consolidate our innovative technology that allows to control temperatures and food traceability in distribution, reduce Food Waste and enhance the integrity, safety and freshness of products, managing in a single platform the data of cold chain and traceability, so as to optimize processes and cut time and costs." said the founders of Wenda, Antonio Catapano and Mattia Nanetti.

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Wenda
Wenda is the Collaborative Cloud Platform that helps distribution and logistics companies gain visibility into supply chain processes and product tracking in a unified way, even across the entire supply chain. Born as a startup in the foodtech sector, it has been supported by international investors that have allowed Wenda's team of more than 15 people to position itself in the cold chain and traceability technology sector at a European level.
The company, founded by Antonio Catapano and Mattia Nanetti in 2015, now aims at internationalization.

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