SKILLS
and TALENT

Skills for Agri-food

For the food system to thrive, it needs the right talent and skills to incorporate new technical advances and innovate. Explore our initiatives below to see how we're supporting the workforce of tomorrow for the fresh produce industry.

Attracting Talent

With increasingly innovative and high-tech businesses, the fresh produce industry needs to ensure that its future workforce has the right skills and training available. Businesses also need to be able to attract and retain the staff they need to grow, package and produce our food.

Ensuring the food system has a pipeline of talent requires effective collaboration and coordination between education providers, industry, and government.

Growing Kent & Medway has undertaken many initiatives to tackle the opportunities and challenges facing the sectors' skills gap. Our Workforce 2030 Strategy, developed following extensive industry consultation, was the foundation for our activity.

Workforce 2030

Report

Skills Strategy for 2030

Recommendations to ensure the agri-food industry has the workforce it needs to thrive and adapt to future market pressures. Developed in consultation with the fresh produce industry.

Read the Strategy

TIAH for Kent and Medway

Career Hub

We partnered with the Institute for Agriculture and Horticulture (TIAH) to create a digital hub to advance careers in our region. Use the hub to find training providers and learn about career options in the local sector.

Explore the Hub

Next Generation of Glasshouse Growers

The Thanet Earth Centre of Excellence at Hadlow College launched in June 2024 to inspire and train the next generation of UK salad and vegetable growers. Growing Kent & Medway proudly partnered the initiative, connecting higher education with industry to create a pipeline of technical talent for the sector.

Woman (Cecilia Wu) smiles, holding two bottles of Super Bio Shot. Display banner says "Trust Your Gut, Feel Your Best." Indoor event setting.

Scaling Science-Backed Gut Health Drinks for Retail with Cecii Health

Cecii Health utilised our business support ecosystem to transform a handmade fermented juice shot into a scalable, market-ready product. By combining technical R&D from our Food Accelerator with expert business mentoring, founder Cecilia Wu has refined her formulation, become a finalist for the Nourish Awards, and is now scaling up for national retail.

Growing Kent & Medway

4 min read

Woman stands by a table with Root Mylk brochures and products in the Medway Food Innovation Centre lab. Wears patterned dress and glasses, looking at the camera.

Stabilising African Superfoods for the Plant-Based Market with Root Mylk

Root Mylk, a Kent-based wellness brand, successfully stabilised their plant-based Tigernut drinks using advanced processing techniques supported by Growing Kent & Medway. By collaborating with the University of Greenwich, they developed a clean-label formulation that eliminates separation and increases shelf life, paving the way for a major retail launch.

Growing Kent & Medway

4 min read

Woman (Marie-Laure Prevost) in lab coat and hairnet examines a red fermented snack closely in a lab setting with bright lighting, conveying focus and precision.

Creating Gut-Friendly Snacks from Rescued Fruit with Fermenti

Fermenti, a start-up founded in Kent, utilised our support ecosystem to transform fresh produce by-products into shelf-stable, gut-friendly snacks. By collaborating with Nim’s Naturally through one of our medium-sized grant programmes, they successfully developed a low-carbon manufacturing process for fermented treats that retains essential live cultures.

Growing Kent & Medway

4 min read

Serious Gaming

Our initiative with Canterbury Christ Church University aims to inspire young people to explore careers in horticulture through the medium of video games.

First-year BA Game Design students created engaging and educational games based on the UK's fruit supply chains.

Play the Games

Wine research scientist Dr Belinda Kemp with the ceo of HWB Group standing with fermentation tanks in the wine innovation centre

Business Innovation Vouchers: Round Two Projects

Discover the winning projects from our second round of Business Innovation Voucher competition.

Growing Kent & Medway

9 min read

Business Innovation Vouchers: Winning Projects Round One

Meet the winners of our first round of Business Innovation Vouchers.

Growing Kent & Medway

5 min read

A Taste of Agri-Tech Careers

We partnered with the STEM Hub to offer young people aged 11-13 years an opportunity to explore a taste of careers in the Agri-Tech sector.

The event at Canterbury Christ Church University offered hands-on workshops to demonstrate different areas of agri-tech in food and farming, including AI monitoring for crop disease, 3D food printing, and genetics and breeding.