Cœur d’Hérault: a mobile canning truck to avoid food waste

Anne Saelens and Céline Barbier are leading their mobile project aboard Simone. JM – JM

Céline Barbier and Anne Saelens are leading their mobile project aboard Simone. Midi Free – JEROME MOUILLOT

Anne Saelens and Céline Barbier are leading their mobile project aboard Simone. -J.M.

Anne Saelens et Céline Barbier conduisent leur projet mobile à bord de Simone. JM – JM

On board "Simone", their truck, Anne Saelens and Céline Barbier, start their start-up: Les Fées Conserv'. With a simple objective: to fight against waste by transforming harvest surpluses into jars, the Coeur d'Héraultaises are launching a crowdfunding operation to equip their heavy goods vehicle with professional equipment.

Packed like sardines behind the wheel of "Simone", their truck parked on the heights of Salagou, Céline Barbier and Anne Saelens strike a pose with obvious complicity. It must be said that these two former employees of the EBE Abeille verte, in Lodève, are now leading their anti-food waste project, Les fées Conserv', aboard what we could call a "conserv-truck". Supported by Novel ID, they have just launched a crowdfunding operation on Miimosa* in order to equip "Simone" on-board equipment essential to their mobile transformation workshop. 

Enhance local flavors

Logical continuation for Céline Barbier, former boss of "Les fées Confiot". "I am a jam maker. This has been my job for 15 years. Every summer, I receive a lot of requests for custom work from local producers who wish to transform their surplus production and unsold goods." Or, "Structurally, the canneries present in the territory are quite distant and cannot ensure small volumes. This is where the idea was born to respond to these demands, to be nomadic and to make jars that allow the flavors of the products to be preserved and enhanced, fruits and vegetables, local.", explains Anne Saelens. Because the preserved jars of Les Fées' will be stamped Nature et Progrès.  The start-up's network is already made up of around thirty local producers, (including "Piments du bout du Monde", in Saint-Etienne-de-Gourgas), &nbsp ; around thirty shops (including Aux P'tits producers de Lodève, L'locale in Gignac or the Bio-coop in Clermont), in a short circuit, over a maximum radius of ;#39;an "hour of Simone" around Lodève(Montpellier, Millau, Béziers, Sète…)

Parts of the observation that there is often too much waste among individuals and losses among producers, these activists, both trained in & nbsp;canning techniques (lacto fermentation, sterilization, pasteurization, hygiene), also display their ambition to "develop workshops to avoid waste. And Simone, would (also) support these workshops", announces Annne Saelens. They have already started to share their knowledge in this area with the idea of ​​making food tasty, accessible and eating better. ;quot;, specifies Céline Barbier'. Fairies who are today paving the way for this new project, which, expanded to vegetables, is already shaping up to be the first heavyweight in mobile canning in Occitania. Production, loaded into the laboratory truck, could begin in April…

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