Levelling Up is our industry’s time to shine

The UK Government has published its long-awaited, 332-page Levelling Up White Paper setting out its high-level vision to spread economic opportunities and prosperity to all parts of the UK.

The ambition to boost productivity, pay, jobs and living standards by growing the private sector is a welcome one. Given we are located everywhere in the UK, food and drink manufacturing can play a central role in levelling up the nations and regions by creating good jobs, upskilling workers and creating hubs of advanced manufacturing.

The Levelling Up White Paper provides an opportunity for us to work with Government, across Whitehall and the devolved nations to boost productivity through automation and technology and preparing our workforce for the jobs of the future. The forthcoming National Food Strategy will also have an emphasis on levelling up, and we hope will provide a framework to develop a robust, resilient and sustainable food supply chain. 

A key focus of the Levelling Up White Paper is economic clusters – defined as “geographic concentration of interconnected companies and institutions”. The government is committed to supporting private sector partnerships through these types of innovation clusters.

There are already examples of where this has been a success. Such as FDF Cymru’s partnership with the Catapult member Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC), supported by the Welsh Government, which provides valuable services to SMEs.

Next month, the FDF is launching a new ‘virtual cluster’ initiative to support the take-up of new technology in the UK food and drink sector. It brings together Catapult centres and universities from across Britain to support food and drink manufacturers with innovation expertise and funding to solve their technical challenges. Please join us at our FDF innovation gateway breakfast launch event to find out more about the new service.  

Levelling up can also provide adults and young people across the country the opportunity to receive more high-quality training. With 500,000 vacancies in the farm to fork supply chain, our sector is primed to give these people the chance to fulfil their potential.

And the FDF is here to help bridge that gap. If you don’t know your T-Levels from your SWAPs, then the FDF’s Skills Toolkit will offer support to companies in the industry to understand and identify the job finding and training schemes best suited to help them recruit and upskill their workforce.

The FDF has long been calling for better data on skills needs within the economy, so we are pleased to see the announcement on a new Unit for Future Skills to provide information on local demand, the future needs of business and the pathways between training and good jobs.

Undoubtedly more needs to be done to engage directly with food and drink businesses and to provide greater clarity on how the plan will be implemented, but we have set out the role that food and drink manufacturing can play in levelling up the country with the right partnership with Government.

Through the Industry Growth Committee, this will be a priority for the FDF over the coming months as we develop proposals to help companies unlock innovation funding, increase adoption of automation, robotics and technology; and create a pathway to the skills and talent.

Caroline Keohane is the head of Industry Growth at the Food and Drink Federation

For a deeper dive into the Levelling Up White Paper, please read the FDF’s summary paper. Contact Caroline Keohane to find out more about our future work in this area.