Navigating the Tax Landscape to unlock cash in food & drink manufacturing

Speakers

Dan Rice - Dan is a VAT Director and Grant Thornton’s Head of Food & Drink.  He has specialised in VAT for 15 years, and has spent most of that time looking at the VAT treatment of food and drink products, both in the UK and the rest of the world. Dan has worked with hundreds of businesses in the sector, and secured VAT zero-rating on nearly 200 different products that had historically been standard rated.

Oskar Augustynowicz - Oskar is a VAT Manager and has been working at Grant Thornton since 2019. Oskar has been involved in dozens of projects dealing with the VAT treatment of a wide range of products from the Food & Drinks sector, delivering high-quality work which has resulted in many millions of pounds of VAT savings for Grant Thornton’s clients. Oskar can often be found sampling anything from kombucha to cabbage water in the hunt for interesting food products.

Stephen Foster – Stephen in his capital allowances role has advised many clients in the food manufacturing sector on various expansion and new build projects, including Albert Bartlett, Kettle Produce, Stateside Foods, Portion Solutions, Ian Macleod Distillers, Scottish Sea Farms, Gordon & MacPhail and Edrington. 

Matthew Foulger - Matt is a Director in the National Innovation Tax Team, based in Manchester. Matt has over 10 years of tax experience, spending the last 9 supporting companies making robust and fully optimised R&D tax claims. Matt leads nationally on food and beverage and also has a specific focus on engineering and technology businesses.  Day-to-day, Matt has an oversight role and is responsible for ensuring the quality of R&D services to our clients, specifically overseeing the end-to-end costings and technical reports, in conjunction with his colleagues.

Lucy Mackenzie - Lucy is a Manager based in Edinburgh, with many years’ experience with R&D tax claims, having previously worked at a Big Four firm. Lucy has a chemical engineering background and worked as a project engineer for a number of years. Due to her industry experience, Lucy specialises in claims across F&B, manufacturing, engineering and energy sectors.

Topics of discussion

What is Food?

Grant Thornton will navigate the topic “What is Food” when it comes to VAT. They will discuss nuances in Food & Drink VAT for existing product lines and how this can impact NPD strategy. Grant Thornton will outline some cases they are currently working on from marshmallows to protein powder and how they have helped clients from SMEs to Large Multinationals to save on their VAT bill.

“R&D doesn’t just take place in the lab.”

The webinar will discuss the opportunities to benefit from the R&D Tax incentives. While many manufacturers will already be benefitting from incentives, there are some overlooked areas which manufacturers may not have considered including the use of automation to lower costs and speed up production times, development of sustainable solutions and green technologies, adaptions of new technology to improve food & drink or packaging production.

Reducing the after-tax cost of capital investment

Tax relief for ‘capital’ expenditure on equipment will be discussed, as well as refurbishment, expansion and new build projects. Grant Thornton will explain the recent changes in the regime that have enhanced and accelerated the value of capital allowances, and will relate this to the type of equipment and works carried out in our industry. Grant Thornton already advise many clients in the food and drink manufacturing sector on various refurbishment, expansion and new build projects.