New innovation centre opened

The Park Royal Food Innovation Centre, named Capital's Kitchen, was opened in London last month. The facility is dedicated to helping small and medium sized food and drink processing companies (SMEs).

It houses a development kitchen, training suite and offices. The centre will also act as a networking hub for food processing and manufacturing companies in or around London, putting on advice clinics, training events, briefings, as well as industry networking events.

This centre is part-funded by a £200,000 grant from the EU through the European Regional Development Fund. Park Royal is a large industrial estate that is home to over 250 food and drink companies, which represents over 30% of London's food and drink sector.

The centre, however, is open to all London-based SMEs in the food and drink industry that have been trading for at least one year in London. The centre will operate as a partly-funded pilot project until the end of March 2011. After that, unless the centre receives further funding, it will start to charge companies full price to use its facilities.