13 February 2015

Manufacturers Inspire Students to Consider Careers in Science and Engineering

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Leading food and drink manufacturers will join forces next month to encourage more young people to consider an exciting career in the UK's largest manufacturing sector.

The Big Bang UK Scientists and Engineers Fair welcomes the industry for a fourth year in a row from 11th-14th March 2015 as part of the Food and Drink Federation's (FDF) 'Taste Success – A Future in Food' careers campaign. With a range of interactive displays on offer, including a DJ robot and custom chocolate sculpture, food and drink professionals will aim to introduce a fun and engaging aspect of the industry that communicates the career options on offer to students.

This time, Coca-Cola Enterprises, Mars UK, McCain Foods, Mondelez International, PepsiCo UK and Premier Foods will be offering fun activities in order to promote Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) careers to young people and their schools.

Following last year's big success of the Bionic Handling Assistant top industry automation supplier Festo will again be at the FDF Taste Success stand with a robot DJ expected to capture student's attention.

Visitors to the FDF Taste Success stand at the Big Bang Fair 2015 will have the opportunity to see a wide range of inspiring activities including:

• See an exciting Cadbury chocolate sculpture handcrafted by the team from Cadbury World.
• Find out how Coca- Cola bottles are being produced and quality controlled.
• Speak to food and drink engineers, graduates and apprentices about what they get up to in their jobs and what it's like to be an engineer working in some of the UK's top companies.
• See how quick you are at grabbing food on the FDF Taste Success MunchBot app
• Try out interactives that have been built by industry apprentices
• Maths production process game
• See live demos of the science of chocolate and more
• Find out how maize is turned into Monster Munch feet in under 10 seconds.

Hanne Christensen, Taste Success campaign manager at the Food and Drink Federation, said: “We are delighted to be part of the Big Bang UK Scientists and Engineers Fair for a fourth successive year along with some of the UK's top food and drink manufacturers. Attracting Britain's brightest students to our sector and promoting the rewarding careers in food and drink is huge priority for us.

“Our stand is intended to stimulate interest in the fantastic range of career opportunities available in food and drink manufacturing and inspire the engineers of the future. Visitors to our stand will be able to learn first-hand from engineers about what it is like to work in the industry while having fun. They can also learn more about the industry's first MEng Food Engineering course at Sheffield Hallam University.“

Note to Editors:

1. The Food and Drink Federation (FDF) is the voice of the food and drink manufacturing industry – the UK's largest manufacturing sector.
2. Further information on FDF's participation at Big Bang Fair can be found here.
3. The Big Bang Fair is the largest celebration of science, technology, engineering and maths for young people in the UK.
4. Food and drink is the UK's largest manufacturing sector employing around 400,000 people in a huge variety of roles. By 2020 the industry anticipates that it will need over 170,300 new recruits to help it meet growing demand and skills shortages in areas such as engineering. The industry is addressing this through its careers campaign Taste Success and through raising food and drink's profile at events such as the Big Bang Fair.
5. Taste Success- A Future in Food is an industry-led campaign to engage with young people, parents, teachers and careers advisors to highlight the wide range of exciting job opportunities available in highly skilled and well-paid professions such as engineering.
6. The MEng Food Engineering at Sheffield Hallam University has been developed by Graduate Excellence, a partnership between the Food and Drink Federation, the National Skills Academy for Food & Drink and Sheffield Hallam University.
7. The National Skills Academy for Food & Drink is the food and drink manufacturing industry's skills body. The Academy was created in 2007 to facilitate sector specific training provision to drive up sector productivity and competitiveness in line with employer needs. Training organisations that become part of the Academy undergo rigorous quality checks and include both publicly and privately funded learning centres. Each delivers some aspect of skills development for the food and drink manufacturing industry as a whole, and/or specialist skills for one of its various sub-sectors.
8. Sheffield Hallam University is one of the UK's largest universities with more than 36,000 students, 27,000 of which are undergraduates. The University has the fourth highest number of postgraduate taught students in the UK and runs approximately 580 different courses. The University is England's largest provider of courses that involve work placements (such as a year in industry) and 91 per cent of the University's graduates are in work or further study six months after graduation.
9. The new world-class National Centre of Excellence aims to support industry growth through helping the sector to improve manufacturing capability, provide engineering solutions for energy and waste efficiencies, deliver packaging innovations through leading-edge technology and skills solutions to inspire the next generation of food engineers.

For further information:

FDF press office 020 7420 7118/31/40 pressoffice@fdf.org.uk

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