Another key area is in ready meals and convenience foods. Major brands including Northern Foods have located in our region, to easily supply their ranges of own and supermarket label items. With an ever increasing population and a rise in single parent families and lone living, the market is seeing an unprecedented demand with nearly ¾ of households buying convenience foods.
As the world’s population increases, companies need to cut production times and costs to meet demand. Yorkshire and Humber is leading the sector in this area. As the UK’s premier advanced engineering location, you can utilize the expertise in manufacturing to develop your facilities, reduce energy usage and increase delivery speeds. It’s no surprise then that CenFRA, Europe’s very first centre of Food Robotic and Automation that forges a link between food and drink companies and academia is based here.
Recent concerns with the nation’s health and growing obesity levels all provide additional opportunities to develop healthy foods. The Humberside Obesity, Nutrition, Education and Innovation (HONEI) Centre is the first of its kind in the UK to examine food and its relationship to disease, particularly obesity. The functional food centre will be key to conducting advanced research and development to ascertain suitability for European Food Safety Authority accreditation.
We have the largest concentration of national retail buyers in the UK. Supermarket chains Wal-Mart-Asda, Morrisons, Netto and Costcutter all have their headquarters here. 3 of the world’s top 4 food and drink companies including Unilever, Coca Cola and Nestle have also all chosen this region and the wealth of opportunities it provides.
We are a central UK logistics hub and you can deliver to over 83% of the population in just 4 hours, through excellent transport links, including the country’s main motorways, the M1 and the M62, that cross the country. You also have the advantageous of being able to avoid the acknowledged transport bottlenecks that can be found around the ports and cities in the South of the country.
In terms of logistics and its consolidation and distribution, requirements are serviced by nationally renowned companies such as Reed Boardall, ACS&T and Christian Salvesen. Yorkshire and Humber also houses some of the largest chilled storage sites in Europe that are all within close proximity to the largest ports complex in the country, the Humber ports.
On the region’s East coast, the Humber ports serve 53 countries including nations in South America, North America and the Far East, as well as being a gateway to the 330 million potential European customers. Many companies such as Nestle and Cadbury have built their own dedicated storage facilities close to these ports.
Doncaster and Wakefield Euro-rail terminals also provide daily, direct rail links into major European markets. Extensive coastline and shipping links has meant that the region has become the largest fish processing and packing region in England and holds a 70% market share in its sector. Direct flights of fresh fish from Iceland into Humberside airport reinforce the fact that the Humber is now recognised as the country’s seafood manufacturing centre.
Yorkshire and Humber has a strong agricultural heritage and now over a third of all the pigs in England are reared within its border, along with a large percentage of the country’s meat and dairy cattle. The significant landmass available also means that 14% of cereal growing to supply the food and drink manufacturing industry takes place here too.
In addition, we’re the centre of Europe’s electronic tagging industry. Major centres in the field of AIDC (automatic identification and data capture) technologies, which includes RFID (radio frequency identification) are based here.
We can also boast being a centre of excellence for packaging and labeling, enabling you to ready yourself for UK, European and International trade. The Food Environment Research Agency, based in the heart of the region in York specializes in ingredient identification for EU labeling compliance, and you can use the regional expertise and academic excellence in materials to produce environmentally friendly and recyclable packaging.