Free business workshops and networking opportunities for small-medium food and drink manufacturing businesses in the North East.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) are delighted to invite you to join them for their Food and Drink Masterclass. This will consist of two sessions (on sustainability and routes to market), followed by a Meet the Expert and Meet the Buyer slot over lunch (provided).

Sessions overview:

Green growth: the business case for improving your sustainability

Bringing together the latest academic research from the National Innovation Centre for Rural Enterprise (NICRE) as well as the hands-on experience and journey of Greggs in sustainability, we will explore the benefits and opportunities of working on your sustainability.

Structured as a conversation between NICRE and the Head of Sustainability at Greggs, we will have two small businesses further sharing their experiences and journey in sustainability. We encourage participants to also contribute to this by sharing their own experiences.

By the end of the session, participants will understand better the business case (“can you afford not to work on sustainability?”) and identify relevant and actionable elements to bring back and apply to their business.

Routes to market

Chaired by Food and Drink North East (FADNE), this panel discussion will seek to highlight how to harness the power of local. It will consist of a roundtable of different topics under routes to market with both experts and businesses . This will be complemented by a Q&A session, providing first-hand experiences and tips.

By the end of the session, SMEs will better understand how to seize growth opportunities and diversify through accessing different routes to market, which will also increase their business resilience.

Meet the Expert

Your chance to have informal, 1:1 conversations about your business with session speakers and other industry experts. The full list of Experts present will be shared closer to the time and will cover the key themes of the day (routes to market and sustainability). Additional business growth and resilience experts will also join us, providing you with a one-stop shop of tailored information and advice.

Meet the Buyer

In this Meet the Buyer session selected attendees will have the opportunity to pitch their products to a buyer. Asda and Morrisons have been confirmed for this session and further details about buyers and how to apply will be shared soon.