Speech: Karen Betts’ opening remarks at the FDF Investment Summit

Opening the event, Karen Betts, Chief Executive, The Food and Drink Federation, said:

Thank you and welcome everyone – in particular, a very warm welcome to Steve Reed, Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and Daniel Ziechner, Minister for Food Security and Rural Affairs.  Welcome too to all the food and drink manufacturers gathered here today, alongside many of the industry’s valued partners. We’re delighted to see you all.

Now, my job over the next few minutes is to set the scene. For the Secretary of State’s speech, for our conversation later with Sarah Jones, Minister for Industry at the Department for Business and Trade, and for what industry collectively wants to achieve this afternoon.

And I can be succinct in this. Food and drink manufacturing has a £14bn growth opportunity for the taking. And now’s the time to take it.

Why now? There are three reasons. First, the strength of what we’re doing across parts of our sector already points the way. We have a great food and drink industry in the UK. It’s innovative, creative, and brilliant value for money. It’s the acknowledged envy of the world. The opportunity now is to ensure it’s truly groundbreaking, from large businesses to small. 

Second, we have the technology and know-how to take our industry to the next level, to grasp those £14 bn of productivity gains. This is already enabling some companies to fly – in what they make and how they make it. The opportunity is to ensure that this culture of innovation and the advances it brings, are widely available and widely applicable.

Third, we have a new government with a clear mission for growth. We know that investment leads to innovation, efficiency, better paid and higher skilled jobs, to enhanced global competitiveness. To stronger communities underpinned by a stronger economy, locally and nationally. That’s what we want and government wants it too. We all agree that investment and growth must be our north star if we’re to create the wealth we need as a country to raise standards of living and renew our public services.

So we’re asking for your support, Secretary of State, as we seize this opportunity for growth. Together, we can make the UK home to the world’s most advanced and most successful food and drink manufacturing sector, in every town, city, region and nation. To do this, Secretary of State, it would be helpful to have:

• First, your commitment to food and drink’s inclusion in Advanced Manufacturing in the Industrial Strategy. Put simply, food wasn’t always sexy enough to qualify under the last government’s definition of advanced manufacturing. But we most certainly are advanced manufacturing. And none of us will need next generation cars or clean air travel if we’ve lost sight of our food security.
• Second, we’re wise enough not to be asking for money (of course it would be nice, but we know there isn’t any). What we do want is coherence. We’d like the government’s commitment to ensure that existing funding and support – through UKRI, Innovate UK, the catapult network, Made Smarter and so on – is properly accessible to food and drink. And regulatory coherence matters a lot to us too.
• Third, we’d like your active support for the Food & Drink Technology Taskforce we’re launching today. This will comprise of Sheffield Hallam University, the Manufacturing Technology Centre, NatWest, Newton, Siemens and others. It will take Newton’s ‘Future Factory’ report, which we’re launching today, as its starting point. And it will recommend action – from how manufacturer relationships with retailers could better incentivise investment, to customising technology for food and drink manufacturing, to how we drive advanced engineering, technical and science skills into our industry.

Secretary of State, our industry wants to partner with government and others to bring about £14 bn worth of real change. I’m confident that’s what you want too.

On that note, can I invite you to the stage? We’re all very much looking forward to hearing from you.