News

Great British Food Unit established

26 Jan 2016

A Great British Food Unit has been established by the UK government’s Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) to turbo-charge UK food exports and support industry growth plans.

A Great British Food Unit has been established by the UK government’s Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) to turbo-charge UK food exports and support industry growth plans, like their target of increasing manufactured food exports to £6 billion by 2020.

The launch of the new Great British Food Unit will back industry targets to further boost exports and support even more British companies export overseas, potentially generating an additional 5,000 jobs in food and drink manufacturing.

The long term ambition of the new unit is to match France and Germany, which both currently export more than double the UK in terms of the value of food and drink, Defra said. For the first time, it will bring together experts in exports and investment from Defra and across government to help even more businesses sell their world class produce around the globe.

The UK already has an international reputation for excellence and as a place to invest in, Defra claims. The unit will support further Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) into the UK’s food industry which stood at a record £60 billion in 2014 – nearly a third of all FDI assets in UK manufacturing.

At the launch, UK breakfast cereal company Weetabix pledged to source all of its wheat from local farmers, helping guarantee the quality of their wholegrain wheat, supporting the UK’s growing rural economy and protecting the environment.

In 2012, Bright Food - China’s second largest food manufacturing company – bought 60% of Weetabix for £1.2 billion due to growing consumer markets in Shanghai, Guangzhou and Nanjing. The cereal is now reaching breakfast tables in 80 countries worldwide, including Africa, Germany, Spain and North America, with the Bright Food deal set to open markets in East and Western Africa. These deals, Defra notes, create and secure more jobs for UK workers.

Defra believes that Weetabix’s success is exemplary of what hundreds of thousands of UK food and drink companies can achieve through the new Great British Food Unit. The Food and Drink Federation (FDF) estimate exports of manufactured goods alone will go up by a third to £6 billion by 2020.

Over the next five years the Great British Food Unit will focus on:

+ Helping more entrepreneurs start exporting for the first time.

+ Supporting further FDI into the UK food industry.

+ Securing and maintaining access for UK meat and dairy products to markets like China, Africa and South America.

+ Helping treble the number of apprenticeships in the food and drink industry to bring new skills and ideas so the pace of innovation continues to accelerate.

+ Increasing the number of Protected Food Names from 64 to 200 to celebrate the rich heritage and iconic traditions of British food, building on the importance consumers place on provenance.