Food & Drink

Food & Drink processing and manufacturing is a sector slightly removed from other manufacturing. Your market forces are different, and you’ll well know that your market place has low income-elasticity of demand (meaning that consumers don’t regulate their spending in proportion to their income). Competition to supply the UK supermarkets dominates your sector, and the buying power of major players has massively increased. The supply chain has seen mergers and consolidation since the late 1990’s in response to food scares and over-capacity. Up to 500,000 people are employed in this sector, but the number is declining as a result of increasing productivity, advances in technology and a widening of the global supply chain. One of the biggest changes in the sector recently- especially in confectionery manufacturing, is the consolidation of operations, usually to continental Europe, to protect margins.

If you’re a successful supplier, you are already concentrating on quality, cost and delivery. To achieve excellence (which is now the expectation of your customers) in all three areas you’ll need to motivate and retain good staff, and upskill them. Your managers must be able to deal with a myriad of operational challenges, and keep a relentless eye on your costs. The best manufacturers and processors in the food and drink supply chain are already focused on further increasing productivity and addressing skills gaps and shortages. You’ll well know that finding those big productivity increases becomes harder as performance levels rise (UK is outperformed only by Canada), so you can’t let up. Despite our strong international “ranking” in productivity, over half the staff employed in your sector don’t have a Level 2 Qualification- room for improvement still? Smart employers are looking to upskill and multiskill their staff alongside the adoption of more and better automation or semi-automatic processing. You’ll have an ongoing staff development plan, and be committed to continuous improvement across the whole workforce.

Mitre Group understands your sector, and can offer you no-cost, effective solutions tailored to your exact needs. Rely on us to provide development solutions that fit around your shift patterns and offer distance and online learning as well as face-to-face training and coaching. We’ll help you improve quality cost and delivery. We can organise and deliver all of your training needs- not just the regulatory-driven requirements but world class skills that’ll impact on your bottom line. We understand the Sector Skills Agreement produced by ImproveSkills, and our offer will be structured and measurable, just as they recommend. We know you like the idea of “pick and mix”- the ability to choose appropriate NVQ qualifications, but balanced by shorter vocational training courses. Our expert staff have worked with major organisations in your sector, including Northern Foods, GlaxoSmithKline, Hollingsworth Foods, Heart of England Foods and the Food & Drink Forum. A typical development programme for your sector is shown below. Contact Paul Tozer now to find out more.

Training Structure