Mercadis: Montpellier municipal wholesale market

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Context

Processing facilities are scattered and almost absent on the metropolitan territory. This does not promote food security and involves higher risks in terms of food safety. The scattering also induces a significant ecological footprint, due to the distance between places of production, processing facilities, storage facilities and marketing places. Finally, food waste is an important issue in the agrifood sector.

Project

Montpellier is a signatory city of the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact. The city is tackling many food sustainability issues with its food policy and through its municipal wholesale market.

The Mercadis Montpellier municipal wholesale market includes several projects to recover food losses and waste, on the promotion of local agricultural production, and the promotion of local food processing.

The Montpellier municipal wholesale market, called Mercadis, is managed by the company Somimon, and has been attached to Montpellier Méditerranée Métropole since 2002.

This market is one of the pioneers to integrate alternative approaches into its operation, such as the creation of a food processing center in 2017.

The food sustainability strategy of the municipal market is made of 6 main pillars:

freshness and seasonality of the products coming from short and local food value chains
the optimization of the delivery system to reduce the number of vehicles
the recycling of 80% of the waste into 4 products: compost - cardboard - wood - animal feed
optimization of land and services
proximity to the city center allowing low-carbon deliveries from the market
partnerships with food aid organizations to distribute non standardized food items

Since 2009, the market aims to strengthen its role in the local economy. Thus, with the support of the National Agency for Environment and Energy (ADEME), photovoltaic panels have been installed in order to create energy. In addition, a recycling policy has been implemented: 73% of the waste produced on the market is recycled.

Implementation

More recently, in February 2017, Mercadis-Somimon market inaugurated its innovative food processing center directly, gathering 6 small businesses which process fruit, vegetables and meat and employ around 40 people. The Food Processing Center is a nursery intended to support agrifood companies developing an innovation. They have gone from the R&D phase to the industrialization phase of their production on the Mercadis market.

The 6 companies are:

Agriviva is a vegetable processing factory that provide school and public canteens with local products within a 250 km perimeter around the processing workshop.
Clarelia develops prepared meals for consumers with specific allergies. They supply collective catering and home deliveries (among its references: Disneyland Paris, airlines ...)
“Il était un fruit” transforms downgraded and oversized fruit into dried fruit, with no added sugars, additives or preservatives. They sell it in supermarkets, but also in various smaller outlets.
“Label d'oc” offers processing services to producers in the 4 departments of Languedoc-Roussillon region, and aims to eventually become a producers' cooperative to give them an easy access to these processing tool.
“Le detour” brews beer as close as possible to consumers, sources its fruit directly from the Mercadis market.
“The taste of beef” enhances local food chains, connecting local producers of meat and local restaurants and consumers. They created a meat cutting and maturing facility, adding value to the meat.

Others:

The “Carreau bio et local” (the local and organic area): Subsequently, at the end of 2017, the market inaugurated its “Organic & Local Area”. Every wednesday morning, about 30 producers offering local seasonal products - including ten certified Organic Agriculture (from Aude, Hérault, Tarn) are coming on the municipal wholesale market to sell their products. This new service allows organic producers to access a diversified professional clientele in a minimum of time: early vegetables, city marketeers, private wholesalers, restaurants, collective catering, etc. This helps to reduce logistics flows in the city, and allows producers to save precious transportation time.

The "Farmer's Box": The market is proposing to set up a "Farmer's Box" only dedicated to regional products, fruits, vegetables and processed products. This "box" will be both a permanent "Show-Room" and a shipping platform. This regional offer would complement the “local & organic area”. Local producers and processors are able to directly control their sells.

Results :

Today, Mercadis is is:

220 producers, wholesalers, traders, processing facilities
500 direct jobs
3,000 professional buyers
120 million euros in operator turnover
50% of the market’s products (fruit and vegetables, meat, wine) are produced in the South of France (€ 60M out of the € 120M annual turnover),
73% of waste is recycled: 14% compost, 28% animals, 13% wood, 18% cardboard

Written by Claire Caillaud, LFC volunteer - June 2019.

Last modification : 27 Apr 2020.