Cheshire college helping fill skills gap
The £7M RFC, which was opened in 2010 and is based on the Cheshire college’s Nantwich site, was recently awarded a Grade A from the British Retail Consortium (BRC), making it the first and only educational facility in Britain to have it.
It was Vogt’s responsibility to obtain the BRC accreditation when she started as a technical manager two years ago. “The BRC accreditation was non-existent until I came here," she says. "This is the first time any college in Britain has had it and it’s something I'm proud to have achieved.”
Prior to the accreditation, the college only had basic hazard analysis critical control point procedures in place, so a lot of work went into it, she adds. A quality system had to be written and the culture of behaviour expected from food and drink businesses had to be implemented across the centre for both students and staff.
About 230 students are enrolled at the facility, which focuses on dairy, bakery and butchery. To get to their classrooms, where they have theoretical and practical lessons, students must first go through changing rooms and carry out the necessary hygiene procedures, changing into whites, while putting on hair nets and safety shoes.
A team of 27 tutors teach at the food centre and nearly all of them have had long careers in the food and drink industry, adds Vogt.
Vogt’s career (Return to top)
As her name suggests, Vogt isn’t from the UK. Her own career in food and drink began in her home country of Germany. “I started an apprenticeship in market trading at Müller Dairy in Germany straight after my A levels,” she says. After two and a half years in that role, she came to the UK with Müller as a quality assurance (QA) technician for a year to learn English and pick up the technical language of the food sector.
Vogt says her experience left her skill-set dairy heavy, so she went back to Germany after a year as a QA technician to study for a Masters in food technology at the University of Bonn. Yet, her dissertation pulled Vogt back to the UK, where she secured a position at NOM Dairy in Telford, which was acquired by Müller in October last year.
“My dissertation was about the differences between BRC accreditation, which is recognised globally, and the International Food Standard, which is only used in Europe.”
While writing her dissertation at NOM, she helped the company secure a BRC standard before taking a job at Fayrefield Foods in Crewe, Cheshire, which also makes dairy products, as a quality systems technologist.
“And that brings me to RFC, where we are working to replicate the food and drink industry’s standards, so students are industry-ready when they leave,” says Vogt.
Ensuring that students were familiar with common industry standards was what drove the college towards achieving the BRC standard, she says. “But it’s also about producing students who are desirable to the industry, because they have the relevant skills.”
It has been widely reported that the UK food and drink sector will need to fill more than 170,000 jobs between 2010 and 2020 to replace those retiring or leaving the sector. Food and drink manufacturers will struggle to fill the roles, says Vogt. However, interest in working in the sector is on the rise among young people, she claims. “In part, this is driven by large food and drink companies that are reaching children in schools to teach them about the benefits of working in food.”
But, safeguarding skills in the sector extends beyond working in schools and requires more time and investment from the sector, she adds. “The UK dairy industry's Eden project is an example of a food sector directly taking on the skills gap,” explains Vogt.
The Eden Project (Return to top)
The Eden project, which is based at RFC, was set up in 2010 by the UK dairy industry to bridge the skills gap in the sector. Initially £2.7M was pumped into a pilot plant by the government’s North West Development Agency, while the industry provided a further £700,000. “It’s unique because companies like Arla, Dairy Crest, First Milk and Müller are all working together for a common cause.”
In terms of facilities, the plant has three 5,000l storage tanks, a 2,300l pasteuriser for cheese-making, a fully automated cheese vat and a milk pasteuriser that can process 1,300l of milk an hour and can work automatically to produce milk of all fat types. There are also two aseptic fillers that can carry out ultra-high temperature (UHT) processing.
Only a small amount of product is made at the dairy, but this is sold at the RFC farm shop, which is popular with staff and locals, says Vogt.
Reaseheath’s dairy facilities and its Eden project are the college’s flagship programme, she adds. “There’s been more than 100 students through it and the dairy industry uses it to up-skill workers, test products and even to produce new products.” Its success has also led to the creation of the Eden Engineering project.
“It’s the next big step in the Eden project to bring more skilled engineers to the dairy sector,” she says. The new course will be headed by Midland Group Training Services, which specialises in training engineers. RFC will provide students with an insight into how dairy products are made, “which is important because the engineers need to know what impact they could have on a product through their work”.
Vogt is also keen to see the Eden project model mirrored by other parts of the food industry, such as the bakery sector. “We’re working on getting it rolled out in the same way and we’ve been talking to some of the big bakery companies to see if it would interest them.” However, it’s hard to get bakery competitors around the same table, even if the end result could benefit the sector, she adds.
While work is being carried out to convince the bakery sector to form the equivalent of the Eden project, RFC is strengthening its own links with other universities and will be heading a new sensory testing facility at a new food centre in the University of Chester.
£4.8M project (Return to top)
The facility is part of a £4.8M project co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund and the University of Chester and is called the North West Food Research Development Centre, or the NowFood Centre. Development kitchens, spaces for start-up small- and medium-sized enterprises, a sensory analysis unit and laboratories will be based at the new centre.
RFC will work on rheology and nano-rheology research in the sensory unit as part of its wider remit to support the food industry as more than an educator.
“Another aspect of RFC is commercial,” she explains. “We work very closely with local, national and international businesses on trials, product development and shelf-life testing.” RFC also does consultancy work, gap analysis and market research “and the sensory unit will add to that part of the service”, adds Vogt. Although RFC is moving into commercial operations, its original function as a learning provider is still the most important role.
“Operating as a food business under tight standards and with BRC accreditation is one of the ways we’re fighting to fill the skills gap,” she adds. RFC is working closely with the food industry to ensure students are learning what they need to in order to get a job, whether that's in bakery, dairy or butchery.
“There are always jobs out there in the food industry, it’s a very rich sector, but there aren’t always the skilled people. We’re trying to give students those skills by balancing classroom education with hands-on experience. We want students to develop their working culture and learn what it is that makes the food industry successful,” says Vogt.
Watch our video interview with Vogt to find out why colleges must deliver the right skills for the food industry’s survival.
