HGCA cash prizes reward enterprising companies
A prize pot of 230,000 has been shared between 10 food manufacturers in the Home-Grown Cereals Authority’s latest round of enterprise awards.
The scheme aims to help companies develop the food products of tomorrow that will boost British cereals use.
This year, most winners were biscuit or bread makers, with Fox’s bagging the largest prize of 35,000 to develop a new line of wholemeal and flavoured crackers.
The Bread Roll Company also won 20,000 to develop a new line of “health” breads with a low glycaemic index, and specialist bread maker Butt Foods plans to use its 25,000 to launch bowls made out of bread for the foodservice sector.
A spokesman said the speciality bread market was seeing double digit growth on the back of health conscious consumers.
Chris Longbottom of TNS urged food manufacturers at the enterprise awards not to ignore the 8.6bn food service sector when marketing their products, but warned that some traditional markets were shrinking.
“Pizza and Chinese food is on the up in terms of meals eaten, but in general fewer grain-related dishes are growing.”
Other winners included United Oilseeds, which won a 31,000 award to develop its healthy high oleic oil made from Nexera rapeseed.
The company expects to use an extra 10,000t of rape marketing the oil to the manufacturing and foodservice sectors.
Suffolk pork processor Tulip was given 30,000 to launch a new range of easy-to-cook products like stuffing made of British pigmeat, boosting cereal consumption by 14,000t a year.