A tribute has been paid to the role of a Penarth store as part of a major community initiative following the economic impact of coronavirus.

The Co-op has been supporting FareShare Cymru to ensure residents across Wales have access to food during the pandemic, which has already taken a toll on local communities where many more people have been facing financial hardship.

Wales has been particularly hard hit with job losses attributable directly to the pandemic, particularly those associated with the tourism and hospitality industry and aviation manufacturing.

A restructuring by the Airbus project because of lack of demand means many of up to 1,700 jobs being shedded will be in Wales.

And there may be worse to come.

Economy and Transport Minister Ken Skates said last month: "A huge number of businesses in Wales face the prospect of autumn where Brexit followed by the pandemic means there is the potential for a perfect storm in terms of job losses."

FareShare, which was founded in the nineties to combat food poverty, works in partnership with other agencies. Among them, the Trussell Trust - which supports nationwide network outlets including Vale Foodbank reported an 81 per cent increase in demand for emergency food parcels in its network during the last two weeks of March 2020.

Vale Foodbank manager, Becky Morgan said: "It has been an incredibly busy time for Foodbanks throughout these last few months, the increase in demand has kept us all working hard."

FareShare works with the suppliers to supermarkets to access some of their food which has become surplus in the supply chain for various reasons, including short dates, over-ordering, and packaging errors.

The food FareShare gets is a range of fresh fruit and vegetables, chilled food - including meat, fish and dairy - frozen food and dry food such as pasta, rice and tinned products.

This food is then redistributed to charities, community groups and not-for-profit organisations who are supporting people in their local community.

The Co-op has supported FareShare's UK wide efforts during the Coronavirus crisis by donating food worth £1.5million to feed those at risk of hunger and the Penarth store has kept up with donations throughout the pandemic to ensure those that need supplies get them.

Gary Stent, manager at the Penarth Co-op said: "We have been able to donate to the community and a local food collector comes down here to collect items we can't use on most days."

A local organisation that has benefitted from the work that FareShare is doing is Innovate Trust, a charity which provides support for adults with learning and physical disabilities across Cardiff and the Vale of Glamorgan.

Their primary focus is managing supported accommodation housing, enabling their service users to live more independently in the community.

Due to Covid-19 many of the support services offered by the Innovate Trust have migrated online, but thanks to the help of FareShare, social and educational activities have been arranged for their service users, in order to keep them safe, engaged, and entertained during a difficult time.

They have also repurposed one of their cafes into a food delivery hub, with their staff working hard to make food parcels and delivering them to their service users' homes.

Jo Whitfield, CEO, Co-op Food, said: "The Co-op has a critical role to play in supporting our members, customers and colleagues, as well as the local communities that our stores sit at the heart of.

"Food banks have never been more important, so it makes sense that we provide support to help FareShare keep people fed and watered during this unprecedented time.

"Co-op already supports around 1,500 local community groups with our national food redistribution programme, Food Share, and we know that they are finding it tough at the moment, so I'm really pleased and proud we can provide FareShare directly with the essential products they need to help our communities.

"It's a great example of us all cooperating and pulling together to help those most in need and I would ask everybody if they can, to contribute to a food bank near to them. Every tin, jar or carton makes a difference."

Lindsay Boswell, CEO FareShare, said "At this time of huge uncertainty, we all need to pull together to help those most vulnerable and most affected by the issues caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

"The very generous support of £1.5 million worth of food from the Co-op will enable the FareShare network to maintain a continued vital food supply line into our charities over a prolonged period of ten weeks, providing great reassurance that there will be a baseload of food provided to the 11,000 charities and community groups that FareShare and our partners support every week across the UK."