Dutch-Belgian supermarket chain Albert Heijn has integrated smart technology in its app to reduce food waste.

Through the app, the supermarket is offering extra discounts on products with a short shelf life, or which have been discontinued.

The supermarket’s platform displays which items have been discounted and how many are available before they visit a store.

The company is also bundling four existing schemes into one initiative, Last Chance Bargains, which includes Yesterday’s Bread, AH Surplus Packages, the Fruit & Veggie Bag and Dynamic Discounting.

Last Chance Bargains is part of the supermarket’s aim of reducing food waste by 50 per cent by 2030 compared to 2016.

Albert Heijn said that the move combines technology innovation and social impact, ultimately leading to a more sustainable food chain.

Albert Heijn said that it expects to save over five million kilos of food through the move.

According to the Dutch Nutrition Centre (Voedingscentrum), in 2022 Dutch consumers wasted an average of 33 kilos of food per person per year.

The food most commonly wasted includes bread, vegetables, fruit, potatoes, and dairy products.

Albert Heijn said it wants as many products as possible to be consumed by customers, adding that to prevent food waste the company already collaborates with farmers, producers and stores across the supply chain.

“I'm pleased that we're taking the next step in our fight against food waste with Last Chance Bargains,” said Nienke Tjerkstra, who is responsible for sustainability and health at Albert Heijn. “The closer the products are to their expiration date, the higher the discount for customers, which can reach up to 70 per cent.

“Thanks to this smart system, we expect to sell 25 per cent more discounted products and thus significantly reduce food waste.”

In May, several brands and charities joined forces to pilot a scheme which uses AI technology to redistribute the equivalent of 1.5 million surplus meals in the UK.

Companies including Nestlé UK&I, Google Cloud, FareShare and Howard Tenens Logistics are aiming to save some of the 4.6 million tonnes of edible food which is wasted in the UK each year in the “first of its kind” project.

The project is using an integrated AI-powered platform from Zest, formerly The Wonki Collective, which leverages Google Cloud’s BigQuery and Vertex AI platform to streamline and accelerate the process of matching available surplus food, including products and ingredients, to where there is demand.

Early trials of the platform have seen an 87 per cent reduction in edible food waste at a single Nestlé factory over a two-week period.

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