At the UK Hub, located at Coventry University Enterprises, we’ve spent the past two years talking to SME food producers about their needs. We started with an overall ‘needs and barriers’ survey and we’ve met a quite number of small companies since then to look much more closely at their barriers to growth.

The result of this work is going to be some highly focussed events we’re calling Missions, and our Mission is to help people find solutions that will give their businesses instant boosts.

We are often told that using technology will invalidate a product form being properly artisan. We don’t entirely agree. The important thing is to clearly identify what makes your product artisan and the points at which manual intervention is essential; then you can automate everything that might distract you from getting that part of the process right.

The topics we’ve isolated are all based around common themes:

• Business Technologies to Free Time

We have begun the process of identifying a series of technologies that will free the producers time from the administration and management of the business. We have found some lovely packages for bakeries and are working hard at finding more – the less time producers spend doing the accounts or chasing debts, the more time they have to do the things that really matter and that sell the business and its products.

• Accessing Technology in Packaging, Labelling and Traceability

There is no doubt but that these are hot topics. To compete in the modern world products need to be packaged right, labelled well and completely traceable. The difficulty is that all these things cost money and so producers may have to live with any decisions you make for a long time. This Mission is designed to help them make the right choices from the outset.

• Packing in the Cold

Many of our producers in the meat and dairy sectors have issues with the speed at which they can chill their food, and how to handle it afterwards without warming it up again or freezing their staff. This will be the focus of a third Mission. We are actively looking for SME who would like a solution to this problem and for technology producers who may already have a solution that would be suitable for small scale producers.

For all these topics we will be bringing together experts and product providers that can help to steer you through these tricky areas. We announced the timings and locations of these events in December. There will be funding available to help with travel costs (for UK SMEs) where required.

Our guests at these events tell us repeatedly that the benefits of our events aren’t limited to the technology access that you gain, but are matched by the value of the contacts you make for your business while you are with us.

If you are interested in the opportunities outlined here then please contact Tess Lukehurst: tlukehurst@cad.coventry.ac.uk