New Industry Skills and Food and Drink Federation Partnership

Welcoming the announcement today of a new Industry Skills Partnership which will enable collaboration between food and drink industry businesses and bodies to boost skills and training provision, Melanie Leech, Director General of the Food and Drink Federation, the voice of UK food and drink manufacturers, said:

“The future success of the UK’s largest manufacturing sector depends on our ability to secure a pipeline of talented individuals. With 170,300 vacancies expected between 2010 and 2020 across a variety of job roles, I am delighted with the success in securing the Industrial Skills partnership.

“To remain world-class and to deliver increased rates of sustainable growth, this new partnership will complement existing initiatives such as the new Masters degree in Food Engineering and Centre of Excellence at Sheffield Hallam University to ensure industry’s needs are met now and in the future.”

Among the “Big Industry Issues” the new partnership will tackle will be:

For new industry entrants:

• Making the sector more attractive as a career destination by providing careers advice to 5,000 young people
• Supporting the introduction of new Trailblazer Apprenticeship standards relevant to food industry roles with 10 new apprenticeship standards
• Helping to fill 500 vacancies and address a chronic shortage of food scientists and production engineers with knowledge and experience of the food industry by matching employers with recruits

For the sector’s current workforce:

• Improving technical skills right across the sector
• Developing industry-accredited quality standards (Kitemarks) for training provision – both for training providers and training courses
• Designing and developing training programmes relevant to modern industry needs. And agreeing the sector-wide training priorities and innovative programmes to be supported by the investment.

About the Employer Ownership of skills programme

Employer Ownership of Skills is a grant scheme to give skills funding directly to employers to empower them to take ownership of the skills agenda by developing an industrial skills partnership.  The Employer Ownership Pilot (EOP) is a £340m competitive fund that invited employers, over two rounds, to tell government how they would better use public investment, alongside their own, to invest in the skills of their current and future workforce in order to grow our economy.

The project is for England and is jointly funded by the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS) and the Department for Education (DfE), and is administered by the Skills Funding Agency (SFA). The project was developed in conjunction with the UK Commission for Employment & Skills (UKCES).