The UK's first demonstration, advice and training centre for robotics and automation in the food industry is to be opened in Yorkshire.
The £1M centre is being set up by Yorkshire Forward, the regional development agency for Yorkshire and Humber. It will be managed by the Centre for Robotics and Automation at Salford University in partnership with the Food Chain Centre of Industrial Collaboration at Leeds University.
The consortium is currently looking for premises in the South Yorkshire area, but it aims immediately to start offering food companies in the region free automation audits and advice on how they could benefit from automation.
The centre will be fully up and running next January, enabling food companies to see demonstrations of robotics in action and to talk to the centre's resident engineering staff about automating their processes. The centre will also provide training to help local engineering companies gain experience of building automation systems specifically for the food industry.
Stephen Fitzpatrick of Yorkshire Forward said there had been a lot of interest from local companies and robot suppliers since the centre was announced in May (Food Manufacture, June, page 21): "We're hoping to have an engineer on the ground by mid-September to start visiting companies." Eventually, the centre hopes to take on three engineers plus technical staff.
Professor John Gray, who heads Salford's Centre for Robotics and Automation and runs the government-backed Food Manufacturing Engineering Group (FMEG) of automation suppliers and food firms, said the new centre reflected the work the FMEG had done over the years in promoting automation in the food industry.
"I hope this will lead to other regional automation centres and maybe a national centre," he said.