Professor Val Braybrooks MBE, Dean at The National Centre for Food Manufacturing, explains why a post-Brexit Boston has the potential to be well-geared to become the leading light in the fresh food and logistics industry thanks to the Towns Fund.
The early impact of post-Brexit trading on the food sector reaffirms that our Boston Town Deal plan to strengthen local food supply chains is bang-on-target. New checks, paperwork and requirements on traders is adding cost and complexity for both importers and exporters, increasing costs and disruption.
Whilst accepting that trading should get easier after transition, there is still an urgent need for local food and logistics businesses to future-proof their supply chains to protect local jobs and keep food flowing. Businesses are having to renegotiate commercial deals, rethink supply lines, retrain staff and restructure. Innovation in digital supply chain technologies, crop sciences and storage and access to higher level skills are essential if local businesses are going to successfully transition.
The Centre for Food and Fresh Produce Logistics will support businesses through this change and the University of Lincoln’s National Centre for Food Manufacturing and Boston College are laying the groundworks to move swiftly when the Town Deal outcome is known.
As partner colleges in the flagship Lincolnshire Institute of Technology, Boston College is preparing a new digital curriculum in logistics and supply, whilst the University of Lincoln’s National Centre for Food Manufacturing (NCFM) is launching its digital technologies offer for the food manufacturing sector. The Lincolnshire Institute of Technology is a unique collaboration between the University of Lincoln, employers and Further Education providers to meet the higher-level scientific and technical skills needs of Lincolnshire’s key sectors, including the Agri-food sector, with both the college and the NCFM having benefited from investment in state-of-the art facilities.
Town Deal funding will enable this skills offer to be rolled out to Boston’s businesses quickly along with support from the University of Lincoln for businesses to embrace digital innovation. Led by Professor Simon Pearson, Director of the Lincolnshire Institute of Agri-food Technology and a resident of Boston, the University has already secured major funding in partnership with South Lincolnshire businesses to enhance digital technologies in the food supply chain.
Professor Pearson is confident that Town Deal funding will lever further investment to catapult Boston’s businesses’ digital capability and demonstrate to other areas the very best in innovative technologies.
The project is a catalyst, the vision being to ultimately enable Boston Port to become a global centre for food import and export by working with local partners to develop Greater Lincolnshire into a major international food hub, the ‘UK Food Valley’ which will compete globally, putting Lincolnshire on the map worldwide and encouraging new investment, businesses and jobs into the county.
The Centre will strengthen investment in the South Lincolnshire Food Enterprise Zone which shortly to open in Holbeach and support Greater Lincolnshire’s designation as a High Performing Investment Opportunity by the Department of International Trade (DTI) for agri-food automation, which will further increase inward investment into Greater Lincolnshire’s food sector. Clearly the Boston Town Deal will be truly transformational for Boston and the surrounding area, which is exactly what the Government seeks to foster through the Town Deal.
Fingers crossed for the outcome we are all seeking!
The National Centre for Food Manufacturing at the University of Lincoln’s Holbeach campus is a major national resource for the UK’s food industry, providing an industry tailored offer of skills, research and support for innovation for both businesses based in the UK and globally.
The NCFM is a leading national provider of Degree Apprenticeships and skills development whilst its business partnered research drives innovation across the sector with the NCFM renowned for its applied research in food manufacturing robotics, process automation, shelf life and storage, new product development, consumer insights and a range of other food technologies.
A new £7miilion Centre of Excellence in Agri-food Technologies on the South Lincolnshire Food Enterprise Zone will open in March 2021 to support the innovation needs of new and fledgling entrepreneurial food and related technology businesses, which will be closely followed by the £2.5million Digital Food Manufacturing Technologies Centre in September 2021, a development of the Lincolnshire Institute of Technology.
