Thursday, 8 January 2026

P&O Cruises donates more than 10,000 meals to Southampton families in 2025 

P&O Cruises is proud to announce significant progress in its mission to reduce food waste, having saved 13,284 meals from the bin over the past 12 months – benefiting 84 families across Southampton.  

Since March 2024, the cruise line has partnered with food-sharing platform Olio, an app that facilitates the redistribution of surplus food to local communities, ensuring good food does not go to waste.

The partnership provides a route for redistributing excess food from P&O Cruises development kitchen on West Quay Road, where new dining concepts are trialled and tested.

Between 1 December 2024 and 30 November 2025, P&O Cruises and Olio have jointly achieved:

• 13,284 meals saved from going to waste, benefitting 84 local families

• 6,006 kgs of edible food saved from going to waste

The initiative underscores P&O Cruises commitment to embedding responsible practices throughout every stage of its food lifecycle. P&O Cruises achieved its 2025 goals to reduce food waste from on board operations by 40% versus 2019 levels.

The cruise line has also committed to reduce this further, to 50%, by 2030. Its partnership with Olio supports this approach to responsible food waste reduction and, parent company Carnival UK, has seen a marked improvement in its food waste operations as part of its Less Left Over strategy. 

Carnival UK & P&O Cruises president Paul Ludlow said: “Minimising food waste is a really important sustainability priority for P&O Cruises and the impact of our partnership with Olio  not only supports our responsible food waste practices, but also actively supports families in our local community. It’s a smart initiative and one we’re incredibly proud to support.”

For more information, call P&O Cruises on 0344 338 8003, visit www.pocruises.com or visit a travel agent. 

ENDS

For further press information please contact:

Michele Andjel, michele.andjel@carnivalukgroup.com 07730 732 072

Sam Balls, sam.balls@pocruises.com 07879 198864

About P&O Cruises

P&O Cruises is Britain’s favourite cruise line, welcoming guests onboard its seven ships to experience holidays with a blend of discovery, choice, relaxation and exceptional service catered towards British tastes. With a proud history spanning more than 187 years, each ship has its own appeal from family friendly or exclusively for adults with every sailing delivering each guest a holiday like never before.

With over 180 destinations worldwide, P&O Cruises itineraries are carefully curated to inspire discovery and are varied to suit newcomers and experienced guests alike. P&O Cruises prides itself on working with top culinary talent; Food Heroes include chefs Marco Pierre White, José Pizarro and Shivi Ramoutar and as well as award-winning drinks expert Olly Smith. Kjartan Skjelde has created Norwegian speciality dishes for sailings to the Norwegian fjords.

Recent awards for P&O Cruises include:

1. Wave Awards 2025 – Best Advertising & Marketing Campaign

2. British Travel Awards 2025 – Best Cruise Line for Family Holidays

3. The Travel Industry Awards 2025 by TTG – Industry Marketing Campaign of the Year

4. Sailawaze Awards 2025 – Best in Entertainment 

5. Best in Cruise Awards by Cruise Critic Awards 2025 – No-Fly Cruise Line (Ocean Category) 

The company is part of Carnival Corporation & PLC (NYSE/LSE: CCL; NYSE:CUK).