Food and drink strategy

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Economy reports

Consortium Co-operative Model

Employee to owner

Board minutes

We support food and drink as one of the key sectors for growth in the Scottish Government's Economic Strategy.

Our work helps drive sustainable economic growth in line with the food and drink industry strategy and the Government’s National Food and Drink policy.

We do this by working with individual businesses, supporting step-change projects and working in partnership with the industry leadership organisation Scotland Food & Drink and other partners.

We help companies access new markets, develop new products, build brands and find investment funding.

Scotland Food & Drink brings together the whole industry to realise its ambition and growth targets. A refreshed industry strategy was launched in December 2009 with the ambition to grow turnover from £10 billion to £12.5 billion by 2017 and to build Scotland's reputation as a Land of Food & Drink. 

In addition there are targets for:

  • Productivity to equal UK levels for food processing and outperform UK levels for combined food and drink processing
  • Increasing research and development spending from 0.25% to 0.75% of GVA with the processing sector ultimately meeting UK levels
  • Increasing exports by £1.4 billion to £5.1 billion with a strong emphasis on food exports.

The Scotland Food & Drink Executive Group has developed an Action Plan 2011-2015 to deliver the industry strategy, with eight priorities to deliver the strategy Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). We are working with our partners in the Strategic Forum (Highlands and Islands Enterprise, Scottish Funding Council, Visit Scotland, Scottish Development International, Skills Development Scotland and the Scottish Government) to support the action plan. 

This involves increased collaboration across the public sector to improve efficiencies and increase our impact on the industry strategy.   

Read the full food and drink strategy at Scotland Food & Drink

Key facts from the food and drink industry in Scotland

If you would like to discuss our work to support the industry and the strategy, contact Lorraine Russell of the food and drink team.