Back to the future

Yet it is hard to find anyone in the UK food and drink industry with less than whole-hearted confidence in the future of food manufacturing in the UK over the next five years, or indeed the next 10 or 15 years to the future of 2020.

While the Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions reported last October that Europe's food industry was following the general decline in manufacturing jobs, British companies are predicting the continuation of a vigorous and innovative food manufacturing sector in the UK. Suggestions of big increases in imports or the offshoring of jobs receive short shrift.

"You'd expect me to say that of course we'll have a flourishing food industry in 2020," says Melanie Leech, director general of the Food and Drink Federation. "And we will. We have a very competitive industry. We are the biggest manufacturing sector in the UK. And there is no reason why that shouldn't continue. It will look different, but I am sure we will have a very vibrant industry.

"What you can predict is that we're on a journey," says Leech. "But the question is: will we still be shopping in 2020? My perception is that we haven't yet reached the breakthrough point for online shopping. Significant things have to happen before internet shopping takes over. But the environment may look very different in the future when you do go into a shop."

Paula Widdowson, commercial director at Improve, the industry's skills watch-dog, agrees that the UK's food manufacturing sector will continue to grow. "It is consolidating its position as the largest manufacturing sector, doubling its contribution to the treasury, trebling exports and regaining its position as world leader in productivity."

According to Widdowson, food companies are employing more robotics, more food scientists and more IT to solve production problems. "The number of food scientists continues to grow at 5% as the sector maintains its position through leading research and development into healthy eating, nutriceuticals and the war on obesity."

Industry's importance will remain

Dr James Northen, chief analyst at food and grocery think-tank IGD agrees. "We certainly see food manufacturing remaining an extremely important industry in the UK by 2020." Traditional economic fundamentals, such as labour availability and cost of borrowing, will continue to determine business decisions, he says. "However, other factors will have more of an impact in the 21st century, not least the environment. Food businesses will increasingly be pushed to reduce waste, carbon dioxide and other emissions.

"As consumers are urged to reduce food waste, increase recycling and neutralise their carbon footprint, so they will take a greater interest in how the industry is behaving. There will be greater opportunities to demonstrate the environmental credentials of consumer goods." The challenge will be defining what is sustainable and justifying the trade-offs, says Northen, such as the environmental and social costs of producing fresh produce domestically versus importing it.

"Given that future forecasting of nutrition trends is my key area of work, there is plenty I could say," says Food Manufacture columnist Stephanie French of Harlequin Plus, nutrition marketing consultancy. "But here are a few thoughts: consumers will manage their diet using personal 'Blackberries' developed to read bar codes and analyse whether foods fit with the person's particular nutritional needs and preferences. And labels as we know them will become redundant. Radio frequency identification tags will tell consumers about the nutrition of a product.

"There will be a focus on the positive rather than the negative aspects of food - we will look back in horror at the food we used to eat and at our lack of concern about antioxidants, phytochemicals, mineral intake and so on."

French also anticipates more regulation to minimise the consumption of foods that are poor in nutrition or detrimental to health. Medical treatment and health insurance will be linked to diet and nutrition, and genetically modified food will become accepted as essential for a healthy diet, she says.

But maybe there's a price to be paid for all this optimism. Food manufacturers will be expected to lead by example, suggests French, who foresees company board members having to come clean in public about their own personal nutrition, weight and exercise.

True farmer partnerships

Meurig Raymond, deputy president of the National Farmers' Union, predicts that with direct farm support phased out by 2020, forward-thinking food manufacturers and retailers will have established supply chains with farmers and growers as true partners supplying food and renewable energy.

"With the effects of climate change more evident, science-based solutions will have to be found not only for carbon reduction across the whole chain but also for farming and growing in a changing climate," says Raymond.

So, a vibrant and flourishing industry, then. A world leader, and an extremely important player in the UK economy. And an industry that looks different. But just how different might Britain's food and drink industry actually look in 2020?

There are three trends you can see now that you can extrapolate forward over the next 15 to 20 years, says Hamish Renton, md of the Riviera Desserts unit of Uniq chilled foods.

The first is what he calls 'Back to the Future'. "Look at the bakery aisle in the supermarket. What consumers are going for now is your granary breads, the breads with bits in it - the bits we've spent years inventing machines to mill out to produce white flour that we then bleach. Customers don't want us to over-process our food.

"But that doesn't mean in future we're going to have a lot of batch production and artisans and people in small kitchens. It doesn't mean that at all. What back to the future means is a more automated version of lighter, simpler processing."

The second trend that Renton sees is the growing interest in the notion of provenance - named origin and named variety of ingredients. "We will find some glamour being put back into food. And this will extend to the processing of food as well. Where it was made, was it made in Leipzig or was it made in Lutterworth?"

Renton's third prediction is the growing process of arbitrage. "You take a food out of a commodity market and bring it into another market where it becomes a premium product. Take Quinoi (a grain). In Peru it is basically a peasant staple food. They eat tons of the stuff. Everybody over there has cupboards full of the stuff. But over here it goes for £4 a kilo. It is absolutely cutting edge.

"What the consumer wants is polarising," claims Renton. "They want commodities that do not vary one iota. And they want differentiation, they want something different - food that is hand finished, has provenance."

More differentiated food

Commodity products lend themselves to long runs and automation, with few people involved, says Renton. "On the other hand I see small batch production, niche production, growing for the more differentiated food. And there will be increasing emphasis on its UK element. We have got tremendous provenance in our farming and our raw materials."

Hilary Baker, communications director at Northern Foods, expects convenience, health and indulgence to remain the key drivers to food buying in the future, although global travel and lifestyle shifts will continue to shape recipe development.

"Better science and better consumer understanding of nutritional benefits will impact what we eat and what the industry produces. Food will be seen as a primary precursor to health, and food-aware consumers will understand more about what they are eating and will know the benefits of individual ingredients.

"People will choose diets scientifically tailored to their needs, incorporating foods and ingredients that address their specific needs - personal 'superfoods'."

The big food issues such as salt, fat and sugar content that dominate comment today will have been tackled by 2020, suggests Baker. "Better education and awareness mean that hopefully the tsunami of obesity should have been arrested in its progress. But one thing is certain, people will continue to enjoy food and the industry will continue to supply outstanding new food ideas to meet that demand."

Tony Hynes, chief operating officer of Greencore, sees a continuing decline in the level of nutrition training and basic home cooking skills leading to the continuing growth in convenience foods.

"But the reality of it is that no matter what piece of research we've done, we constantly come up against the fact that the consumer does not enjoy the experience of going into the big supermarket to do the big food shop with the big trolley and all that goes with that.

"My sense is that there is going to be a growth of the local convenience store - assuming it can deliver good, healthy and tasty products with absolute transparency of ingredients." And not only will people want to shop local, they will want to buy local, he adds. "Essentially, they will want to know that their food is being made relatively close to where they are. That means the consumer will be more likely to reject things that are coming from overseas."

Trustworthiness will be the key, says Hynes. "The consumer will want products they can trust, and to know where they have come from, that it's not too far away, and that it is people they know who have actually put the foods together."

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