Forget manufacturing, the future is food, says Sainsbury’s boss

by Marcus Leroux - 11/03/2010

"Sainsbury’s and Asda are setting up landmark schemes to train apprentices and sell the food retail industry as a career choice."

The move comes as Justin King, Sainsbury’s chief executive, said that Britain should create a world-leading food industry rather than trying to save its ailing manufacturing sector. The food industry had been neglected by policymakers, he said.

Sainsbury’s will announce today the opening of Britain’s first bakery college, which will speed up and standardise the training of bakers for its 412 in-store bakeries. Sainsbury’s first apprentices will begin their training next month. It said that the bakery college would halve the time taken to train a baker to NVQ-level and would improve quality control.

Asda, meanwhile, is offering 15,000 work experience places to 14 to 16-year-olds and a further 15,000 apprenticeships to existing staff.

The Government has placed work experience and apprenticeships at the heart of plans to prevent youth unemployment. Under the Young Person’s Guarantee, 18 to 24-year-olds who have been unemployed for six months will be offered a job, training or work experience. However, Mr King, speaking to The Times before a speech today to the IGD grocery research body, criticised the Government for failing to give enough attention to the training needs of the food industry and said that it should extend apprenticeships to those aged over 24.

Mr King said: “There’s been a view — and it’s almost our fault for allowing it to exist — that food manufacturing and food science jobs are inferior to heavy industry and engineering.

“Food manufacturing is a massive contributor to wealth. The automotive industry and heavy industry get talked about, often because of their export potential . . . But the level of employment food manufacturing creates is huge. We’re able to offer genuine life career opportunities.”

He added that the Government should seek to improve skills and training in the food sector, rather than succumb to propping up failing heavy industry. “The lesson of the last 30 years is clear: if industries that don’t have good reason to exist in customer or consumer terms are sustained by subsidy or public support, they are doomed to fail. Therefore, the focus of Government should be on those with an opportunity to grow.”

The remarks come amid concern over the future of Britain’s heavy industry and engineering sectors and calls from across the political spectrum to reduce the economy’s dependence on financial services by encouraging manufacturing.

Last week Sir Anthony Bamford, chairman of JCB, the construction equipment manufacturer, complained that only a third of the components in its most popular digger were produced in Britain, compared with 96 per cent in 1979.

“[The food industry] is a sector we should be proud of and we’ve rather hid our light under a bushel, while discussing the components of a JCB,” Mr King said.

Sainsbury’s pointed to the success of the food science department at University College Cork, in the Republic of Ireland, as a template that Britain should emulate: “That grew out of an investment programme the Irish Government put in place to make food manufacturing one of their key growth areas.”

Mr King said it was a “worrying oversight” that the food industry was neglected in the Government’s skills strategy, outlined last November. The food supply chain employs about 3.6 million workers in Britain and is the country’s biggest manufacturing sector, according to the IGD.

More Details: http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/article7056070.ece