When the Food Bank of Alaska won a $1.5 million state grant to distribute food to its partner agencies and affiliate food banks, the pressure was on.
Awarded in late January, the terms of the grant had to be completed swiftly – by June 30, 2025. The food bank needed to distribute pallets containing a variety of shelf-stable items, and knew from previous grant cycles that mixing the pallets on site would take up a lot of warehouse space and stretch the limits of its short time frame.
The complexity of Alaska’s transportation system didn’t help matters. Only 20% of Alaska’s cities and towns are accessible by road, which means trains, planes and boats are all par for the course when it comes to moving food around the state. All in all, many things needed to go right for the food bank to successfully use up the grant money on time.
In the end, the food bank pieced together a supply chain that allowed it to receive a steady supply of pre-mixed pallets that traveled via ocean container by truck, rail car and barge, even before arriving in Alaska. Help came from Fresh Connect Central, which was able to pre-mix the pallets at its site in Indianapolis at a cost-competitive price, as well as Matson, a transportation company that has its roots in Pacific Ocean shipping.
As the only food bank serving all of Alaska, the food bank’s team of 38 – including 18 logistics and operational staff members – are well-versed in navigating the state’s complex shipping system. “Getting food around Alaska isn’t a problem. That’s what we do,” said Frank Kelly, Chief Operating Officer. “It was the timing and the coordination to get it from Indianapolis. Their dock to our dock was at least a three plus week lead time.”
Fresh Connect Central, the wholesale food distributor operated by Gleaners Food Bank of Indiana, was tasked with mixing, packaging and securing products onto sturdy pallets for arrival at the Port of Alaska. Each load of food – about six loads per month – needed to contain 40 identical pallets with two to three cases of 20 different items. The pallets had to be double-stacked and ready for immediate distribution, and each load had to hit exactly 44,000 pounds.
Matson, an international shipping company that brings imported goods to Alaska’s port from Tacoma, Wa., donated 40-foot ocean containers. These traveled by truck out of Matson’s yard in Chicago directly to Fresh Connect Central’s dock in Indianapolis. Back in Chicago, the ocean containers were transferred to rail cars for travel to Tacoma, where they were loaded onto barges for journey by sea to Anchorage.
Matson donated all of the sea shipping and provided the transcontinental transportation at cost, saving the project about $260,000, which was used to purchase about seven additional containers of food. In addition, placing product in one ocean container for the entire journey saved time, money, and likely a lot of product damage, Kelly said.
Without Matson’s donation, the multi-step trip from Indianapolis to Alaska would have cost upwards of $18,000. Instead, each load was done for roughly $3,600. The food bank still had to execute the last stretch, in which pallets are delivered by air or water from Anchorage to rural villages. This “last mile” typically costs the most – between 50 cents to $3 per pound of food, explained Kelly.
“Thankfully, the air carriers, the barge tags and all that, they are super, super helpful, especially when trying to get needed commodities like this out to the villages,” said Nick Gee, Assistant Logistics Manager. “They put forth a good effort.”
Some product damages were incurred on the three-week trip from Fresh Connect Central’s warehouse in Indianapolis to the pallets’ delivery at Alaska’s port. But by the fifth delivery, Fresh Connect Central had better secured and packed the goods. Most notably, the company’s team double stacked pallets to fit more in the 40-foot containers and put one-by-four strappings on pallets from bottom to top to minimize damages.
“Overall, the partnership has shown how flexibility and coordination can help bridge the gap between food and the people who need it — no matter how far away they are,” wrote Brooke Dixon, Fresh Connect Central’s Business Development Manager, in an email.
Each of the pallets carried shelf-stable products like baking mix, canned black beans, cheese crackers, peanut butter, white rice, and other goods with extended best-by and expiration dates. Pallets couldn’t be personalized by partner agencies since turnaround was tight and other logistical challenges were at play.
Items were selected on what was useful and practical for most Alaskans to use. Given the many modes of transportation required for products to make it to Alaska, fresh produce was out of the question for this project. “We had to build that standard pallet with a mixed product of pantry shelf-stable items to satisfy 80% or 90% of anybody who would receive it,” said Kelly.
Most of the food Food Bank of Alaska distributes comes from retail and wholesale donations from national brands like Albertsons, Kroger, and Costco. About 30% of its food comes from USDA government commodities through various programs such as the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations and the Commodity Supplemental Food Program. Only 5% is purchased or from food drives.
Food Bank of Alaska hopes to collaborate with Fresh Connect Central again when funding permits. In the meantime, the staff will continue curbing hunger for their fellow Alaskans. “I feel like a million bucks when I leave here at the end of my day, feeling like I’ve helped so many people that are in need,” said Gee. “It’s one of the reasons why I really love my job.” – Gabriela Flores
Gabriela Flores is a graduate student at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. She is interning at Food Bank News for the summer and has previously reported for Mott Haven Herald, The Rockaway Wave, City Limits and Queens Daily Eagle.
Like what you’re reading?
Support Food Bank News
