Food rescue charity FareShare has officially opened its new kitchen on South Audley Street in Abbotsford.

This facility is located in Melbourne’s inner north-east.

The state-of-the-art facility will serve as Australia’s largest charity kitchen, and will see rescued, donated and homegrown food transformed into millions of delicious, healthy meals to support the dignity and wellbeing of Australians experiencing hardship.

The Allan Labor Government contributed $2.2 million to the project which upgraded key equipment to expand packing and chilling capacity.

The Albanese Labor Government committed $2 million to the $8.16 million project, which significantly upgraded the kitchen. Nearly $4 million was raised by philanthropic funding to make up the remaining funds toward the project.

With a kitchen area that has been expanded by 35 per cent, FareShare is now able to produce a staggering additional 500,000 meals every year.

In addition to the new kitchen facilities, the site’s warehouse has more than doubled in size, to enable the storage of larger quantities of rescued food, as well as keeping the vegetables and herbs grown at FareShare’s kitchen gardens fresh.

There are also new offices, banks of ovens, cool rooms, wash areas, store rooms, a forklift area, laundry and cleaners’ areas, bin rooms, toilets and parking spaces.

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FareShare’s meals for people experiencing food insecurity are given away free to frontline charities such as soup vans, homeless shelters, women’s refuges, First Nations organisations and groups providing disaster relief.

“There are plenty of people here in Melbourne and across Australia, who are suffering hardship and finding it difficult to afford meals,” said Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government Catherine King.

“It’s wonderful to see the significantly upgraded facilities here at the Fareshare Abbotsford Charity Kitchen now open, which will be able to dish up 4,000 free meals a day, to more than 400 charities that will assist in distributing the food to those in hardship.”

“The upgraded facilities will also allow for meal production for frontline charities to be upscaled in times of natural disasters should this be needed,” she concluded.