FDF backs resource efficiency funding
The Food and Drink Federation (FDF) has welcomed the announcement from Innovate UK (formerly Technology Strategy Board), Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), who will invest up to £11 million into new business projects to improve the resource efficiency and resilience of the UK food and drink supply chain. The competition Improving food supply chain efficiency for collaborative research and development projects opens on 13 October 2014.
With the increasing pressures the industry faces to produce more from less with less resource, this new competition fund will enable the industry to be in the driving seat of delivering improvements throughout the supply chain eg. through the reduction of waste, using resources such as energy, water and raw materials more efficiently or improving the productivity of food manufacturing and processing operations.
This new fund provides an opportunity to grow the UK’s food engineering capability, through the National Centre of Excellence for Food Engineering (NCEFE) at Sheffield Hallam University, by bringing together industry and academia to research and develop new and improved resource efficient solutions for the sector.
Gavin Darby, CEO of Premier Foods and chairman of the Industry Advisory Board for the National Centre of Excellence for Food Engineering at Sheffield Hallam University, says, “Access to this fund will support new and innovative engineering solutions that will help improve the industry’s competitiveness and ultimately deliver better resource efficiency. The Centre of Excellence for Food Engineering will play an important role as a hub for industry collaboration to address a range of industry-wide challenges.”
Melanie Leech, director general at FDF, adds, “I am delighted the importance of the food industry has been recognised through this major new investment which will allow businesses to collaborate to find industry-wide innovative engineering solutions, creating a more resilient and resource-efficient food and drink manufacturing supply chain.”
