A Taste for Training

Despite the food and drink sector being the biggest manufacturing sector in the UK (accounting for 16% of the UK’s total production market) and being one of the largest sectors in the world, jobs in the area are often thought of as poorly paid with low prospects of personal growth and educational ladder.

Traditionally, the food sector has been thought of as employing low-skill factory workers. However, with the increasing automation of manufacturing processes and with consumers more concerned than ever about healthy nutrition, the industry has moved towards highly qualified and experienced professionals. This shift, however, has left the sector with an increasing lack of skilled workforce to serve the market with new technologies and solutions.

Approximately 400,000 people directly work in the UK food industry, and as many as 1.2 million in related food services. Already nearly 40% of all employees in the industry possess high school or above qualifications. The demand, however, is much higher: current figures from the Food and Drink Federation (FDF) show that by 2017 the sector will require 137,000 new recruits to fill the widening gaps of skilled professionals.

Create awareness

"In my opinion, there is a common misconception regarding the types of careers available within the food industry," says Darsh Gajjar, industrial placement manager at the University of Reading’s department of food and nutritional sciences and head of industrial training. "There is little awareness of the amazing career opportunities, from scientific roles to commercial roles."

The department has been working closely with the industry to overcome the problem. According to Gajjar, it has to be tackled before the university entry level: "Science teachers in secondary and sixth form colleges need more support and education to help them differentiate between ‘home economics’ and food science, so they can in turn educate their pupils and feed this into their learning."

"Food science is strongly grounded in science, we need to reach out to the future chemists, biologists, physicists and mathematicians. In an ideal world Jamie Oliver, Heston Blumenthal, Jon Snow, Stephen Hawkins and the Foo Fighters would launch an awareness campaign," she says.

But also the government has to work closely with the food sector to invest, support and facilitate the industry’s endeavour of creating awareness regarding the nature of food science and the opportunities within the employment market. "After all, in such gloomy financial times educators, industry and the public sector need to work together to strengthen the economy by supporting such a thriving industry," says Gajjar.

Collaboration of education and industry

The greatest need for qualified personnel comes from the scientific side of the industry such as new product development (NPD), sensory analysis and quality assurance (QA). However, in order to fulfil these roles the candidates need a strong foundation in science. Management and commercial roles can also be filled with graduates from other disciplines.

According to Gajjar, academics and the industry have to work together on a daily basis to motivate young people to follow a scientific path and to recruit them for a career in the food industry. "Education and industry need to work in partnership to continue to guide, provide opportunities and fund outreach activities in order to widen participation," she says. "It is paramount."

At the department of food and nutritional sciences at the University of Reading, industry and research fall into all the different degree courses. In addition to that, the department has an industrial advisory board (IAB), consisting of senior industrial professionals and academics. The board’s purpose is to act as a consultative capacity to guide the department in matters of teaching and learning and to keep a close eye on the industry.

"We pride ourselves on being industry focused. We have strong links with the industry and have been encouraging and providing paid industrial placements for over 50 years," says Gajjar.

Taste of success

The importance for collaboration has also been stressed by the FDF, the representational organisation of the UK food and drink industry. At the release of the ‘UK Food Supply Chain’ report, published by food and drink sector skills council Improve and the FDF, on 24 May 2011, FDF director of competitiveness Angela Coleshill said, "There is certainly appetite for investment in skills, which is why FDF members are taking collective action to ensure we can attract highly talented young people into the food and drink manufacturing sector.

"In partnership with Improve and universities, FDF hopes to become directly involved in the implementation of food and drink degree courses by offering undergraduates work placements and internships," she adds. "Apprenticeships will also be a key mechanism for the industry to attract talent for the future and FDF members are aiming to significantly increase the number of apprenticeships in the sector over the next 12 months."

As a first step, the FDF has launched the ‘Taste Success – A Future in Food’ initiative, to raise awareness of the issues the food and drink industry is facing in terms of poor image and lack of knowledge of careers available, and with the aim to change this perception. Key focus of the campaign is to highlight the current shortage of qualified food scientists and technologists.

"Campaigns such as ‘Taste Success’ are increasingly important as they not only create awareness of the quality and quantity of professional, scientific, innovative and creative jobs that are available within the UK food sector, but also the variety," says Gajjar.

Training and further education

High-quality education is not only important for job beginners; further education and training to develop careers within the sector is as equally important. For instance, Campden BRI, the UK’s largest independent research and development organisation for the global food and drinks industry, offers training programmes for employees from the private and public sectors across the food and drink supply chain in areas related to safety, quality, efficiency and innovation.

In 2010, Campden BRI trained over 5,000 individuals in about 200 different industry-focused courses. Head of training Bertrand Emond says, "Most of our courses are short, ‘off-the-job’, fully paid for by the companies. Their bite-size format is perfect for continuing professional development and climbing the ladder of learning. Delegates are usually from a junior to senior position in a technical role.

"It is very important to keep up to date in this fast-evolving world; continuing professional development is essential to stay competitive," he says.

Campden BRI head of corporate communications Leighton Jones adds: "One of the recurring themes is the loss of experience from industry through retirement of experience technologists and engineers. It seems to be widely felt, that those reaching the end of their careers were exposed to a depth and breadth of experience, through education and on-the-job training – that is no longer possible with new recruits.

"This seems to be partly a consequence of changing practices and pressures of time. With fewer opportunities for newly qualified staff to develop really specialised roles and build up detailed specialist knowledge of specific technologies or sectors, in ways that were once the norm," he continues.

But not only changing approaches and pressure of time have stirred up concern among industry members how to fight the lack of skilled industry offspring. Also new political developments, such as the government’s decision to raise the university tuition fees from 2012 could reflect in a decline of food science graduates.

Darsh Gajjar, however, remains optimistic. "My hope is that the rise in fees will result in more research from potential students and parents regarding employability and potential scientific and commercial careers within the food industry. My hope is that, through this research, both will realise that you can carve out an amazing, rewarding and varied career in challenging financial times."