Food and Drink sector resilience

On 11th February, Climate East Midlands facilitated a workshop for businesses in the Food and Drink sector, focusing on resilience to severe weather and climate change. The workshop was kindly hosted by Samworth Brothers at their new Bradgate Bakery, Ashton Green site, near Leicester. The site is notable for its sustainability features, including a sustainable drainage system (SuDS) and for generating 22% of the site’s energy needs from renewables.

Peter Andrews from the Food and Drink Federation (FDF) set the scene by giving an overview of the key challenges facing the sector due to climate change. Food and Drink is the largest manufacturing sector in the country, and the changing climate is likely to cause price volatility and disruptions to production and distribution.

An online survey of the sector, conducted by the FDF and the Environment Agency asked for opinions on the top two greatest challenges facing the sector in the next 5-10 years. 29% of respondents said “Impacts on overseas supply chains from weather and climate changes”; and 17% said “Impacts on UK operations from weather and climate changes”.

The top three climate related impacts felt to carry the greatest risk for their business operations over the next 5-10 years were:

• Drought or water availability (75% of respondents)
• Flooding from heavy rain (67% of respondents)
• Flooding from rivers (50% of respondents)

The survey findings also suggested that it’s still early days in terms of food and drink manufacturers’ progress on adapting to climate change: 42% of respondents said that they were just getting started, compared with 4% of respondents who said that they had comprehensively planned, taken action, and systematically update their plans as part of an on-going process.

Simon Noble from Birmingham-based SME, Cleone Foods, provided an account of how they have integrated severe weather and climate change into their risk management processes, and taken strategic action to ensure business continuity. This enabled them to convince a major supermarket chain of their ability to deliver, leading to an 11% increase in sales.

One of the key steps Cleone Foods has taken is to set up a reciprocal co-manufacturing agreement with Shire Foods in Warwickshire. This allows emergency production to be easily shifted between sites in the event of severe weather, without affecting either company’s production. A full case study is available here. It can be a challenge for SMEs to find the time to do longer term planning, but Cleone Foods demonstrate just how worthwhile it is.

Kay Johnstone, Environment and Business Advisor at the Environment Agency’s Climate Ready service, talked about how existing management systems and standards can be used to increase business resilience. In particular she focused on business process standards, such as ISO 14001 (Environment Management) and ISO 22301 (Business Continuity). Climate Ready and BSI have published a smart guide on "Adapting to Climate Change using your Business Continuity Management System," which is free to download from the BSI website.

Climate East Midlands also introduced the Business Resilience Health Check tool, which produces a prioritised action plan for your business. Several participants were able to testify to the tool's usefulness, having already used it.

Useful resources:
FDF Sustainable Sourcing guidance: Five steps towards managing supply chain risk
Climate Ready guidance: Assessing and managing climate change risks in supply chains
Climate Ready and the FDF guidance for the Food and Drink sector: How to prepare a climate change action plan

This workshop was part of the Building Business Resilience project.

For more information please contact [email protected]