News
26/03/2010 09:52:37Good News for the Food & Drink Industry in the South West.
South West Food and Drink (SWFD) have successfully secured £695,000 from the South West of England Regional Development Agency for a new programme on behalf of the region’s food and drink sector.
The ‘Developing Sustainable Food Chains’ programme is an investment programme designed to improve the supply of locally produced food and drink into the region’s urban markets. It will do this through identifying current and emerging market opportunities and building the capacity of the sector to take advantage of these.
SWFD will work with a range of partner organisations throughout the region, to address the challenges within the Food Chain by carrying out a series of integrated initiatives which link together to solve problems now and also prepare the ground for effective solutions in the future. There will be:
- Identification of gaps in the system
- Identification of market opportunities, including current and possible future market opportunities within the region’s urban centres
- Generating demand and supply awareness, involving events and workshops aimed at communicating the information from the research conducted above
- Developing sustainable distribution models, building on existing or developing new models of sustainable distribution
- Developing business expertise and capacity, including the identification and development of innovative new products, the identification of training and skills needs, the provision of sector-specific market intelligence, identifying aligned funding and building the capacity of the sector to improve productivity
- Providing strategic integration from primary producers through to the consumer
- There will be strong synergy and linkages with other regional and national initiatives, such as the Rural Development Programme for England and Sustainable Farming and Food as well as the SWFD Food & Drink Skills project
South West Food and Drink Executive Director, Christine Marshall, said: “We are delighted to announce this initiative, which is the culmination of a lot of hard work by SWFD and our partners throughout the region. This is a unique opportunity for South West Food and Drink businesses to benefit from a truly integrated and innovative project that will enable them to access a range of markets across the region. The importance of how this programme is designed to link with all the other funding streams in the region at this moment in time, has been paramount in our minds. We needed to ensure that the South West Food & Drink Industry can get the best value out of all the funds that are currently available.
“We anticipate that there will be 9 individual projects working with a variety of South West Food and Drink businesses, across the region, providing specialist support across a number of disciplines and types of organisations. The South West Regional Development Agency have fully supported our proposal, for which we are grateful and we are convinced that the project will lead to a useful legacy for the region’s industry.