Greencore experts join skills crisis webinar

The free webinar - How to boost food manufacturing productivity in a skills crisis​​​ - kicks off at 3pm on 9 September and aims to help factory managers cope with production line and middle management staff shortages.

Working for Greencore for almost five years, Schubert joined the company as head of business improvement and boasts a total of more than 20 years’ experience in engineering, maintenance and continuous improvement roles for companies including Unilever, Reckitt Benckiser, and Coca-Cola in Europe.

He will offer considerable insights on total productive maintenance, preventative maintenance, increasing efficiency, manufacturing excellence and continuous improvement.

Blending management techniques with operational excellence​

Barnfather will partner with Schubert to address how to blend management techniques with operational excellence. He has worked in grocery retail and manufacturing for eight years, first for supermarket chain Morrisons, then for Greencore. With a background in people management, he has lived and breathed the challenges of talent acquisition and skills development and retention in the food industry.

Schubert and Barnfather will join Jack Payne, solution consulting director, food & beverage, Aptean, which is also sponsoring the webinar, and Andrew Brodie, people and communications director at Avara Foods.

In addition to short presentations from Brodie and Payne, all four will form a panel to field live questions from registrants on the challenges the shortages of workers in posing for them in their own businesses.

'Worst skills crisis in our lifetime'​

With just under a week until it goes live, the webinar is being held as labour shortages hit production across the entire food industry. Brodie describes it as 'the worst skills crisis in our lifetime'​​. 2 Sisters Food Group president Ranjit Boparan warned of the 'worst food shortages in 75 years'​​ as a result of the situation. A dearth of delivery drivers​​, together with workers self-isolating has further hit supply.

A Grant Thornton report​​ published last month claimed that of the 953,000 job shortages across all UK industries, more than half were in the food and drink sector.