29 October 2014

Top CEO inspires future food engineers on industry's first engineering degree

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Students on the UK's only food engineering masters' degree course dedicated entirely to food and drink manufacturing got to hear from top industrialist Fiona Kendrick, CEO of Nestlé UK & Ireland, yesterday.

Fiona's lecture provided a valuable insight into the operations and the engineering challenges facing the world's largest food and drink company. The keynote lecture at Sheffield Hallam University was part of the MEng Food Engineering programme.

The degree supported by industry started in September 2014 and has been developed by the Food and Drink Federation (FDF), the National Skills Academy for Food & Drink and Sheffield Hallam University to create employment-ready engineers with the skills most sought after by the UK's largest manufacturing sector.

The lecture coincided with the publication of new research by Nestlé UK & Ireland that further highlights the skills shortage the course is seeking to address. It reveals that the majority of UK businesses (62%) feel that Britain is facing a worrying shortage of young people with science, technology, engineering, and maths skills to meet future demand.

Nestlé UK & Ireland is one of over 40 companies that are supporting the degree, which has been developed in close partnership with industry to be delivered by the new National Centre of Excellence for Food Engineering at Sheffield Hallam. The degree offers guaranteed competitively-paid work placements with the UK's top food and drink companies and real job prospects to its graduates.

Director of Employment and Skills at the Food and Drink Federation (FDF) Angela Coleshill said:

“It was a wonderful opportunity for students to hear from a real expert who has really achieved in the field. There is no substitute for people with experience to bring to life the course curriculum."

“Our industry's ability to achieve our ambition of growing by 20% by 2020 by driving innovation lies very much in the hands of our employees, particularly our future engineers. This is why businesses from across the industry have pledged their support and worked together to create the MEng Food Engineering degree at Sheffield Hallam University, developing the next generation of advanced engineers and leaders of the future. It's great to see companies like Nestlé UK & Ireland going the extra mile to promote the fantastic opportunities available in food and drink.”

Fiona Kendrick, CEO of Nestlé UK & Ireland said:

“The food industry does encompass a fantastic and diverse range of businesses and offers so many interesting opportunities and career routes. This £6.9 million pound investment is a breakthrough moment for our industry and a really fantastic facility and I am delighted that students here today and in the future will benefit from it.”

Notes for editors

View photos from the visit on Flickr.

1. The MEng Food Engineering at Sheffield Hallam University has been developed by Graduate Excellence, a partnership between the Food and Drink Federation, the National Skills Academy for Food & Drink and Sheffield Hallam University. Students benefit from guaranteed competitively-paid work placements and have exclusive access to jobs that are only on offer to course graduates (subject to final grades, references and employer recruitment processes).
2. Companies supporting the MEng Food Engineering include: ABP UK, apetito, Ardo UK Ltd, Arla Foods, Burton's Biscuit Company, Cargill, Coca-Cola Enterprises, Dalehead Foods, F. Duerr & Sons, Fine Ladies Bakeries, Finsbury Foods, Fosters Bakery (Staincross) Limited, General Mills, Kavli UK Ltd, KP Snacks, Maple Leaf Foods, Mars, McCain Foods Ltd, Mondelèz International, Nestlè UK, New England Seafood, New Primebake and Bakkavor, Princes Limited, PepsiCo UK, Pork Farms, Premier Foods, Silver Spoon, AB Worlds and Jordans & Ryvita, Simpsons Ready Foods, Tate and Lyle Sugars, United Biscuits, Warburtons, William Jackson Food Group.
3. The Food and Drink Federation (FDF) is the voice of the food and drink manufacturing industry – the UK's largest manufacturing sector.
4. The National Skills Academy for Food & Drink is the food and drink manufacturing industry's skills body. The Academy was created in 2007 to facilitate sector specific training provision to drive up sector productivity and competitiveness in line with employer needs. Training organisations that become part of the Academy undergo rigorous quality checks and include both publicly and privately funded learning centres. Each delivers some aspect of skills development for the food and drink manufacturing industry as a whole, and/or specialist skills for one of its various sub-sectors.
5. Sheffield Hallam University is one of the UK's largest universities with more than 36,000 students, 27,000 of which are undergraduates. The University has the fourth highest number of postgraduate taught students in the UK and runs approximately 580 different courses. The University is England's largest provider of courses that involve work placements (such as a year in industry) and 91 per cent of the University's graduates are in work or further study six months after graduation.
6. The National Centre of Excellence at Sheffield Hallam University builds on the launch of the UK's first food engineering degree.
7. Graduate Excellence has received co-investment from the UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UKCES) through the Employer Investment Fund.
8. Nestlé UK & Ireland, a subsidiary of Nestlé SA, the world's leading nutrition, health and wellness company, is a major player within the UK and Irish food industry employing 8,000 employees across 23 sites.

For More information, please contact:

FDF Fleur Williamson on 020 7420 7120 pressoffice@fdf.org.uk

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