Sell surplus
Sell goods with a short or expired best-before date
A best-before date is not an expiry date. Act early enough and you sell instead of disposing — and the earlier you act, the more of the value of the goods remains.
Best-before is not use-by
The best-before date (BBD) states until when the producer guarantees the specific properties of the product — taste, colour, texture, nutritional values. It is not a statement that the goods are unsafe afterwards. Food may in principle continue to be placed on the market after the best-before date has passed, as long as it is still sound; the assessment and the responsibility, however, move with it.
Strictly to be distinguished from this is the use-by date, which highly perishable goods carry. Once it has passed, the goods may no longer be sold as food — at that point only feed or recovery routes remain, if any.
For day-to-day practice this means one thing above all: the value of your goods falls with every week of remaining shelf life that passes. The most expensive mistake is to offer a batch only when disposal is all that is left anyway.
In practice
When selling pays off
Not every product with a tight best-before date is a problem case — often it is simply in the wrong channel:
Remaining shelf life below the trade threshold
Many buyers require a minimum remaining shelf life on delivery. Once it is undercut, the goods are locked out of the regular channel — yet perfectly usable for processors who put them straight into production.
Seasonal goods after the season
Articles whose sales window has closed lose value abruptly in your own channel even though the best-before date still runs for months. Here the revenue is usually still high.
Delisting and range changes
When an article is delisted, the recipe changed or the packaging redesigned, remaining stock with a full best-before date is left sitting and blocks warehouse space.
Best-before date already exceeded
Even then routes exist, as long as the goods are sound — narrower in the food channel and with a higher duty of care, routinely in the feed channel.
Utilisation routes
Utilisation routes by remaining shelf life
The more shelf life remains, the higher up this list your goods land — and the higher the revenue:
- 1
Food processing with immediate use
Processors who put the goods straight into production don't need a long remaining shelf life. This is where most of the value of the goods is preserved.
- 2
Clearance and alternative markets
Via intermediaries and markets with different requirements, even short remaining shelf lives can still be placed within the food channel — with sales restrictions where your brand needs protecting.
- 3
Animal feed (former foodstuffs)
Products no longer sold as food can go into feed production as former foodstuffs. This is an established, regulated route — it demands clean documentation and excludes certain product groups.
- 4
Energy recovery
Biogas and comparable routes are the last stage. The revenue is small, but still sits above the cost of disposal.
Pricing
What determines the price
With short-dated goods a single factor dominates all others — time. After that come:
- Remaining shelf life — by far the most important factor, every week counts
- Whether the goods carry a best-before date or a use-by date
- Type of packaging: retail-ready consumer units, bulk containers or loose goods
- Whether the goods are labelled and thus tied to a brand or a country
- Storage conditions and, where required, a seamlessly documented cold chain
- Quantity and uniformity of the lot
What are your goods worth?
Request a free, non-binding price estimate — or call us directly if time is short.
The legal framework, short and honest
An exceeded best-before date does not automatically make goods unmarketable — but whoever places them on the market afterwards must be confident they are still sound. That is why we ask more questions about such lots than usual; not out of distrust, but as the precondition for being able to buy at all.
With the use-by date there is no such leeway. Once it has passed, the food channel is closed.
The feed route has requirements of its own: not every former foodstuff is permissible as feed, and the origin must be documented. We clarify this before the purchase, not after.
These notes are orientation from trading practice, not legal advice. In the concrete case we look at the batch together.
FAQ
Short-dated & expired BBD – frequently asked questions
Other types of surplus
What else we buy
Off-spec goods
Batches outside the agreed specification — analysis values, sensory attributes, particle size, labelling.
Learn moreSide streams & co-products
Press cake, whey, trimmings, pomace, spent grain — continuous streams rather than single batches.
Learn moreOverproduction & cancellations
Flawless goods without a buyer — sold off without disturbing your own market.
Learn more