A new management scheme to support reverse logistics processes in the agrifood distribution sector

During the last decades, reverse logistics and reuse of products have received growing attention as profitable and sustainable business strategies. Looking at the agrifood distribution sector, every day thousands of agrifood stores throw away large quantities of food product no longer suitable for sale. This “waste product”, in the majority of cases, could still find new uses as animal feed or fertilizer. The return flow of food product is a typical problem of reverse logistics. This study proposes a new bi-modular scheme for managing the process of collection of “food waste” resulting from the agribusiness distribution sector and its subsequent distribution to livestock farms and collection centers located in the area of interest. The proposed management scheme consists of two modules:- module 1: to cluster the observed area into convenient collection sectors by means of clustering algorithms;- module 2: to identify optimal retrieval routes within each cluster by using Vehicle Routing models.The province of Cagliari in Sardinia (Italy) has been identified as test area. An extensive data collection process has been performed in order to collect the information necessary to portray the existing scenario. The following businesses have been recorded: grocery stores and supermarkets with at least 400 sqm of retail area, livestock farms with at least 200 heads of cattle, feed mills. A number of variables concerning location, type, size and demand data have been collected for each recorded unit.The management scheme has been implemented in a software platform and successfully applied in the test area. The outcome provides useful insights to stakeholders and suggests avenues for further research in the area in order to develop a more general and intuitive tool for managing reverse logistics processes in agrifood chains.