Ten food manufacturers have shared a prize pot of £230,000 in the Home-Grown Cereals Authority’s latest round of enterprise awards.

The scheme aims to reward food companies with innovative product ideas that will benefit the British cereal sector.

But only a few of the winners directly use grain themselves; many process meat, where large quantities of grain are used in animals’ feed rations.

The largest prize of £35,000 was given to Fox’s Biscuits to develop a new line of wholemeal crackers and the Fox’s Bistro range, boosting grain use by 2972t.

United Oilseeds also won a large £31,000 award to develop its high oleic oil from Nexera rapeseed, mostly for the manufacturing and foodservice sector.

The company expects an extra 10,000t of rapeseed to be used in the first year of the three year project.

Pork producer Tulip in Suffolk was given £30,000 to launch a new range of easy-to-cook pork products made from British pigmeat, boosting cereal consumption by 14,000t.

And lucky Boat Noodles scooped £25,000 to launch its products to retailers and wholesalers in north-west Europe, increasing wheat sales by 3854t over the next three years.

Other winners included Greencore for exporting malt to Japan, Muntons to export malted wheat flakes to the US, Gold Line Feeds to launch its Gusto pet food in Europe, the Bread Roll Company to develop ‘health’ breads, Butt Foods to make bread bowls for restaurants and supermarkets and Robin Appel to research Maris Otter barley.