The government has promised to provide expert advice and access to technologically advanced facilities for food companies, as part of its drive to make Britain’s food and drink sector an economic powerhouse.

More than 6,000 companies working to prolong foods' shelf life or develop new sources of protein will gain access to test kitchens and labs to help them bring new products to market as part of a new Food Innovation Network (FIN), launched on Monday by Defra secretary Andrea Leadsom.

The Network’s launch follows the unveiling of the government’s International Action Plan for Food and Drink at the SIAL trade fair in Paris last week. The Defra secretary has claimed this plan - which revolves around targeting specific markets for UK exports - could garner almost £3bn for the UK food sector in the next five years. However, food policy experts have been critical of the government’s focus on exports in the absence of a far-reaching strategy; experts from the Centre for Food Policy at London’s City University argued that the government needs to develop a more holistic policy that goes across traditional ministerial briefs, including agriculture, environment, education and healthcare and focuses in particular on increasing horticulture production to provide good food with less impact on the environment.

As part of the FIN, food businesses will be able to access expert advice on issues like intellectual property, and 'matchmaker' services that will link them with research and technology expertise via an online portal.

Commenting on the launch of the Network from Sand Hutton in York, home to the National Agri-Food Innovation Campus, Andrea Leadsom said, “Our thriving food and drink sector has already helped make Britain more globally competitive through its incredible innovation. The UK’s food and farming sector generates over £100 billion a year and employs one in eight people, with the food manufacturing sector bigger than cars and aerospace combined.

“From extending the shelf life of our food to increasing the amount of Vitamin D in our eggs, the Food Innovation Network will help make the sector as forward-looking as possible and push the boundaries of British food production.”

Simon Baty, the new Co-ordinator of the FIN, added,  “The Food Innovation Network will identify the innovation needs of agri-food businesses and connect them with research experts, so they can transform their superlative science into valuable, innovative and commercial products.”

The move, following as it does last week’s announcement that Defra will focus on chasing lucrative export markets and investing in support for food businesses, fits into the government’s Great British Food Campaign, an industrial strategy introduced earlier this year which pins hopes for growth on Britain’s food sector.

Commenting on the unveiling of the FIN on Tuesday, Dr Martin Craig, a research fellow at the Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute (SPERI) said, "It appears to conform to the government's new-found appetite for ‘industrial strategy’, but if you look a little closer it looks like more of the inadequate approach to manufacturing support of the previous few decades: piecemeal interventions trying to get firms and scientists to talk to each other. That’s undoubtedly an important ingredient, but it’s far from clear that this approach alone is sufficient, especially given the scale of the government’s stated ambitions for this and other sectors.
 
"The government’s ambitions themselves are rather suspect. Simply enabling businesses to grow and export more of the same kinds of product is hardly a strategy for food security. What we need is a green industrial strategy, in which domestic food and energy production are made ecologically sustainable, and in which the environmental damage associated with imports is factored into food policy. That will require a considerably bolder ‘mission statement’ from the whole of government, and a willingness to allocate resources accordingly."