Help will soon be at hand for manufacturers with health and safety issues associated with having employees of different nationalities whose mother tongue is not English.

Guidance to be launched at the end of March will offer practical advice on delivering health and safety information, training and supervision to such workers. It has been drawn up by Greencore, Tulip UK, Uniq, Northern Foods, the North West Food Alliance and legal firm Eversheds.

Although firms in the UK have employed overseas nationals from Portugal and other countries for many years, there has been a huge influx of workers from the new European Union accession countries and further afield in the last couple of years, making the delivery of basic health and safety information increasingly difficult and costly.

According to recent figures from the food and drink sector skills council Improve, more than 23,000 overseas nationals are believed to work in UK food and drink manufacturing.

While often highly educated and skilled, the workers can also cause health and safety problems if language barriers are not overcome, said Improve's skills development director Jon Nixon.

The guidance document will be available on-line from early April at http://www.nwfoodalliance.co.uk .