UK food industry offers good career prospects: Survey

A new survey by the UK Food and Drink Federation (FDF) suggests that the national food manufacturing industry offers stable and secure employment or promising career prospects to its employees.

About 45% of the 1,100 respondents of the Harris Barometer Survey, conducted in spring 2012, said the UK food industry offered them a stable and secure working environmnet, while 40% believed they have good career prospects.

FDF director of Competiveness Angela Coleshill said that FDF is pleased with the findings, which reveal that the food industry is an exciting and stable sector to work in.

"We employ some of the most innovative people and with a variety of roles from creating, developing, researching and marketing new products – the food industry is a great place to work," Coleshill added.

The FDF aims to achieve 20% growth in the UK’s food and drink manufacturing by 2020 and believes that it is important to attract the best talent to the industry to reach this goal.

The federation said that it is perceived that jobs in the food industry have no prospects and are poorly paid, when in fact, the industry hires a number of highly skilled and highly paid people.

In order to clear the misconceptions about careers in the food industry, the FDF has previously launched the campaign ‘Taste Success.’

The key goals of the campaign are to promote the food and drink manufacturing sector as a good career option; clear the misconceptions that the sector is outdated, show the availability of long-term opportunities in the sector, and fill the current skill gaps in the food and drink manufacturing sector.

According to FDF, the sector will require 137,000 new employees in the next five years, of which 45,000 will be for managerial roles and professional occupations (33%).

The food and drink manufacturing industry represents 16% of the total manufacturing sector in the UK, employing 400,000 people directly, and nearly 1.2 million in related food services.