Welsh bakery staff on course for improvement

Processors have rushed to back a two-year project to develop basic courses in skills such as maths, English and IT for workers in the food and drink industry in Wales.

The project is spearheaded by the Bakers, Food & Allied Workers Union and sector skills council Improve and is being funded by a £90,000 pot from the Welsh Assembly government. Processors supporting it include Premier Foods, Warburtons and Finsbury Food Group, all of which have manufacturing sites in Wales.

The courses are intended to provide a stepping stone towards an apprenticeship and other vocational training and are expected to be up and running by the end of 2009. They will be open to anyone, but are pitched at level 1, so ideally suited to young people just out of school looking to begin an apprenticeship, said Improve.

The initiative is focused mainly on the bakery sector, although firms outside that, such as RF Brookes, are already involved. Improve said a fuller roll out to other categories would depend on the buy-in of other unions.

Huw Rees, Improve’s national operations manager in Wales, said: “Employers all over the country are telling us that they are struggling to find suitable candidates even to fill trainee or apprentice positions. We have identified a gap in the provision of basic skills training for new recruits and we are very pleased that the bakery industry is working with us to address the issue.”

Rees said the industry desperately needed to recruit younger people, as half of the workforce was aged 40 or above. “A new generation must be recruited and it is vital that we have the measures in place to ensure they have the skills needed to move the industry forward.”

The courses will be offered on-site at bakeries across Wales, including the newly opened learning centres at Memory Lane Cakes in Cardiff and the RF Brookes and Avana Bakeries sites in Newport.