
Motivated by environmental, social, and health challenges – such as the pressure of climate change and concern for animal welfare – the food industry has seen significant changes over the past decades, with an increasing demand for transparency, focus on food safety, and sustainably-produced products. This was further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which revealed the fragility of food supply chains. Local foods, organic and/or fair trade, and less resource-intensive food is becoming more popular among consumers within the mainstream market, evidenced by a significant growth in sales. In terms of total sales, the plant-based food sector increased 49% in Europe between 2019-2021, while the organic food sector increased by a historic 22% in Germany in 2020. The industrialized food system is expected to continue to dynamically develop in production, processing, and distribution in the coming years to meet the food security challenges of a growing global population.
KLU’s research group on Food Supply Chain Management seeks to combine rigorous academic research with practical insights along the entire food supply chain – i.e. from farm to fork – to investigate initiatives and improve efficiency and sustainability along the supply chain. We strive to create a knowledge platform for state-of-the-art research and innovative concepts for managing food logistics and food supply chains of the future.
Research Projects
Ongoing Research Projects
Security in Food Production and Logistics with Distributed Ledger Technology - NutriSafe
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Read moreSelected Publications
(2019): An inventory management approximation for estimating aggregated regional food stock levels, International Journal of Production Research, 175 (1): 1-17.
Abstract: Food is an important resource in disaster management, and food stock levels hold significance for disaster mitigation research and practice. The presence or absence of food stocks is a vulnerability indicator of a region. A large part of overall food stock, before a disaster strikes, is held by private companies (retailers, wholesalers and food producers). However, there is little-to-no information on the food stock levels of commercial companies, and no approach exists to derive such information. We develop an approximation model based on essential inventory management principles and available data sources to estimate aggregated food stock levels in supply networks. The model is applied in a case example that features dairy product stock levels in the German state of Saxonia. The resulting overall stock levels are normalised, and their usability is showcased in a simple vulnerability analysis. Disaster managers are provided with a model that can be used estimate otherwise unavailable data and facilitates investigations into the regional resilience of an area. The limitations of our study are based on the aggregated nature of the supply network structure and data usage (i.e. in the model, we do not consider any seasonality or trend effects).
The Food Research Group Team

Professor of Supply Chain and Operations Management
Kühne Logistics University - KLU

Associate Professor of Freight Transportation - Modelling and Policy
Kühne Logistics University - KLU