Years of expertise are under threat

There are many European funds to help the industry attract recruits and give them a leg up the career ladder. For example, the Food Processing Knowledge Transfer Network gives an employer up to half an employee's salary for the first year of their employment. They are then retained from the second year onwards at full pay.

This works well for graduate progression. Unfortunately, I believe there may be a surplus of such funds every year. As a result, the opportunity to promote people into the industry is halted.

In difficult times we have an obligation to retain experienced staff. They have the expertise to pull an organisation to the other side if functional resources are stretched. Therefore, the industry and government need to address the necessity of attracting people into the industry and forge a financial support package from such EU funding to prevent the loss of experienced qualified staff in difficult times. This could be supported by contributing up to half of an employee's salary through this EU fund in their second year of employment to allow external economic factors to turn around.

Keep drip-feeding the industry with new recruits, supported by UK government and EU funding. But make sure we don't let good, experienced, qualified staff leave at the other end as this is not sustainable.

Darren Gedge

technical director

Pinneys of Scotland

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