Conclusion
To state the obvious, food and drink plays an essential role in all our lives – few of us would function well beyond midday without something to eat and drink. But much more than simply sustaining us, food and drink frames our lives. It’s the foundation of our relationships, our communities and our society; of our heritage, our culture and our traditions. It goes without saying that we couldn’t support a nation of 68 million people, nor one that’s projected to be 78 million by 2050, without the food industry we have. Our industry makes an enormous range of food and drink at scale right across the country, as part of a hugely efficient and sophisticated food system that delivers this fresh into shops, supermarkets and homes every day. By any measure, today’s food system is an astonishing success. But we’re not complacent. Like other industries, there are pressures on us that we know we must address – from climate change to the resilience of our supply chains, from poor diets and ill-health to innovation and technology adoption in manufacturing. So we must continue to transform, and stay at the cutting edge of science, invention and advancement in manufacturing. If we don’t, we risk not only creeping food insecurity but a failure to grasp the economic growth and productivity gains that an advanced economy such as ours can and should achieve. This report highlights the opportunities open to us today to harness next generation technology, automation, digitisation and AI in the UK’s food and drink manufacturing industry. This will in turn drive greater productivity and business growth, alongside new jobs and more opportunity right across the UK, securing the future of our planet for the long term.
To do this, we need to collaborate more – within and between businesses up and down the food supply chain, and with academia, government and others. As Newton sets out, there are firm foundations to build on. UK food and drink is groundbreaking in some areas and could be so in more, if between us we drive the right change. Working with FDF and our members, our new Food & Drink Technology Task Force will prioritise and progress the recommendations in this report, including: benchmarking UK against global best practice in technology investment, and testing and adjusting business services to better suit food and drink manufacturing; identifying areas of pre-competitive collaboration across our supply chain including retailers and farmers, to create the conditions in which investment can flourish, including creating a ‘food & drink sandbox’ to pilot new approaches; and working with Skills England, industry and education sector on food and drink engineering and science skills, learning from other sectors. The work we’re starting today will be judged by its effectiveness in creating a more productive, sustainable, resilient and healthier food system. But make no mistake, it’s within our gift, acting together and as an industry, to renew the foundations on which we are built, and to ensure that, in ten years’ time, they are rooted in the technologies of the future.
Karen Betts OBE Chief Executive, FDF
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