Coles has pledged to provide $5 million in grants and interest-free loans from its existing Nurture Fund to help farmers across Australia combat drought.
The supermarket giant created the Nurture Fund in 2015, promising to allocate $50 million over five years in grants and interest-free loans to farmers and food manufactures to fund the development of new market-leading products, technologies and processes.
Today they announced they would re-direct $5 million from the fund solely for drought mitigation projects.
A day after Woolworths pledged $1.5 million to Buy a Bale, Coles has also launched a fundraising appeal in more than 800 supermarkets across Australia to help families suffering from the drought.
All funds raised will be provided to the Country Women’s Association (through its state and territory organisations) to provide support to drought-affected families to help cover household expenses such as school expenses and food, medical, electricity and water bills.
Coles managing director John Durkan said the supermarket giant was keen to do more to support families affected by drought.
“Many of our team members at stores in drought affected communities have heard harrowing stories from customers about the impact of the drought,” he said.
“Our store teams in these communities have helped by collecting donations of non-perishable food or providing gift cards but we wanted to take action at a national level to help more families facing hardship right now and to help farmers to combat drought in the future.”
Coles’ support will involve:
- A fundraising appeal for CWA’s drought relief efforts whereby customers can donate $2, $5, $10 or an amount of their choice at any Coles checkout across Australia;
- $5 million in grants or interest free loans from the Coles Nurture Fund for farmers who have a project which will help them to combat drought in the future
Coles is also supporting its grass fed beef suppliers by buying their livestock as grain fed beef if the farmers have been forced to feed grain to their cattle during the drought.
Already over the past year, Coles has provided over half a million dollars in grants to farmers who applied to the Coles Nurture Fund to implement initiatives to make them less dependent on rain.
In Coolac, New South Wales, Michael Crowe from Gobarralong Valley Beef has used a $400,000 Coles Nurture Fund grant to build unique facilities to manufacture animal fodder indoors, making him less dependent on grass and water.
At Oxley Flats in Victoria, Nigel and Hannah Stephens received a $134,000 grant to install a more efficient irrigation system so they could reduce their water use and grow grass-fed beef all year round.
To apply for a Coles Nurture Fund grant or loan, log onto www.coles.com.au/nurturefund
