Foodman Excellence Awards

Improve and The National Skills Academy

Sponsors of Training Programme of the Year

Improve provides the strategic overview for the food and drink manufacturing sector to help increase performance and productivity. It researches which skills are needed and sets national occupational standards, regulating and ensuring that qualifications are fit for purpose and reflect the skills the sector needs.

Being partly government- and partly selffunded, Improve is perfectly placed to be the voice between employers and government. It articulates and champions the sector's needs to government skills bodies and reports back on government policy and how it affects the sector. Improve carries out indepth research into the skills landscape across the UK. This research is the basis for the development of qualifications, ensuring they are in-line with industry needs.

Improve continuously develops suites of National Occupational Standards (NOS) for the food and drink industry.

The National Skills Academy

A single source of training for the food and drink sector, The National Skills Academy (NSA) uses Improve's insight to ensure that employers get exactly what they need.

It has been developed to help food and drink manufacturers train their staff so that they can achieve the maximum from their abilities and help them achieve their full potential. It works with groups of employers to develop industry-wide solutions and with individual companies to satisfy specific training needs.

It operates through a high-quality delivery network of approved food and drink training providers including universities, colleges and private institutions. Although completely self-funded, the NSA works in partnership with Improve, continually feeding back valuable frontline intelligence to ensure continuous improvement and up-to-date information.

Air Products

Sponsors of Frozen Foods Manufacturing Company of the Year

Air Products presents its Freshline® solutions, cooling, chilling, freezing and packaging applications for bakery goods, fruit and vegetables, poultry, meats, fish, ready meals or anything in-between. Air Products' Freshline® solutions offer you the right gases and equipment to extend the shelf-life and quality of your food products, an international supply capability, and - most importantly - the unmatched industry experience and technical support to help you succeed, just about anywhere in the world.

Air Products serves customers in technology, energy, healthcare and industrial markets worldwide with a unique portfolio of products, services and solutions, providing atmospheric gases, process and speciality gases, performance materials and chemical intermediates.

In 1965, the company helped pioneer the use of liquid nitrogen for ultra-fast food freezing.  Since then, it has been helping food industry customers use the latest gas-based technologies in all kinds of applications - from tunnel, batch and immersion freezing to modified atmosphere packaging, waste water treatment and more.

Air Products has derived many of its greatest product innovations from problems its customers asked it to solve. It works closely with its customers to select the optimal supply solution for their food applications. For more information visit:

The Cheese Warehouse

Sponsors of the Company of the Year Award

The Cheese Warehouse supplies cheese, cheese products and expertise to the UK's food manufacturing Industry. It processes British and Continental cheese in a range of formats to suit each customer's application, whether it is grated, crumbed, diced, shaved or shredded.

With time-saving and ease of preparation being an important factor for today's consumer, The Cheese Warehouse provides convenient cheese ingredients to help producers provide fresh, inspired and tasty meal solutions Addedvalue cheese products include individually quick frozen mozzarella pearls, portion-controlled cheese pellets, sachets and flavoured cheeses. It also provides ideas and inspiration and presents new products to its customers in its development kitchen, which is fully-equipped for developing and testing new products, ideas and concepts.

The Cheese Warehouse can supply the cheese ingredient to suit. 

Coriolis UK

Sponsors of Dairy Manufacturing Company of the Year

Coriolis, a specialist adviser to the food and drink industry, works with international clients to deliver operational excellence - with a passion.

The company values its workforce highly. It employs exceptionally talented individuals who combine high academic qualifications with a sound and diverse experience of manufacturing operations in blue chip companies.

Coriolis has developed a number of proven tools and techniques that support clients in areas that range from manufacturing excellence through to capital projects management.

The service can transform operational capabilities to meet and adapt to an everchanging business environment. Coriolis has helped some of the best-known names in industry tackle the prevailing issues and "get it right". This is what its clients say:

"The Coriolis team's results were impressive. Their comprehensive list of improvements include increasing our fermentation capacity by better use of existing assets, reduced packaging, improved supply chain costs and better inventory planning," says John Power, vice president global supply chain, AB Enzymes. "As a direct result of their success, Coriolis are now working with other ABF Ingredients companies in the USA and Germany." 

Gist

Sponsors of Fresh Produce Manufacturing Company of the Year

Gist is a leading UK supply chain company with a history that spans over 100 years.

Gist has a turnover of euro 600M and is a leading player in the perishable and chilled sector, although Gist's 1,000+ customers cover a wide range of commercial and industrial sectors.

The creation of bespoke solutions that meet all the requirements for time and temperature control, alongside optimising transportation and warehousing, means food producers, manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers can gain significant competitive advantage through their supply chain.

Gist's 5,000 employees operate from 54 locations in the UK and continental Europe. Through its extensive network of sites and close partnerships it manages UK, European and global end-to-end supply chains from Asia, South America and South Africa. Gist is owned by leading gases company The Linde Group.

The Linde Group has an annual turnover of euro 12bn, through which Gist benefits from global capability, synergy and scale.

KIMBERLY-CLARK PROFESSIONAL*

Sponsors of Meat & Poultry Manufacturing Company of the Year

Food safety is not just your priority - it's ours, too.

At KIMBERLY-CLARK PROFESSIONAL*, we're committed to working in partnership with our food industry customers to help ensure the highest standards of hygiene and safety in the workplace at all times.

Just turning up to deliver the products our customers have ordered isn't our style. We know every production site is different, so we take the time to establish the specific needs of a business before recommending the products that can help make their manufacturing site a cleaner, safer place. And it doesn't stop there. We believe in building long-term relationships, so you can be sure that as your business grows and evolves, we'll be there with you at all times to make sure your requirements are still being met.

KIMBERLY-CLARK PROFESSIONAL*offers a wide range of flexible solutions and packages to suit every health and safety need in the food manufacturing sector, from cleaning products and equipment to protective work wear. Using the latest technology - and always keeping sustainability in mind - our products offer food safety managers unrivalled performance and peace of mind in the production environment.

At KIMBERLY-CLARK PROFESSIONAL*we know food safety is not just about choosing the right products to install. Education is also vital - and that's why we recently ran our ‘Take Control of Poor Hand Drying' campaign, which emphasised the importance of installing safe and hygienic hand drying facilities, such as single-use paper towels, in food processing sites. This initiative underlined the KIMBERLY-CLARK PROFESSIONAL* commitment to helping food businesses ensure they always have the best systems in place to achieve the highest standards of safety.

To find out more about how KIMBERLY-CLARK PROFESSIONAL* could help your business with its food safety needs, please visit www.kcprofessional.com/uk / or call 0800 269470.

Make KIMBERLY-CLARK PROFESSIONAL*part of your food safety team today.

Kuwait Petroleum International Lubricants (UK) Ltd

Sponsors of Personality of the Year

Q8Oils supplies high-quality lubricant base oils exclusively from Kuwaiti crude feedstock. The oils are refined by a specialist hydrofinishing process that produces base oils which are almost free of impurities.

The laboratory in Leeds is the Industrial Centre of Excellence in the UK. With world-class scientific equipment and highly experienced chemists, Q8Oils is leading the way in industrial lubricant technology.

Q8Oils has achieved and maintains BS EN ISO 9001:2000 certification for its customer service and internal business processes. The industrial and manufacturing sectors have experienced dramatic changes in recent years due to the increasing demand for quality and productivity. In a bid to support this dynamic and robust industry, Q8Oils has recently launched a newly extended food-grade lubricant range (Rossini).

The Rossini range has been designed to meet and exceed the specialist requirements of the food and drink industry, offering something for all manufacturers, large and small, across a range of applications, delivering cost saving, efficiency and performance benefits.

Lauras International

Sponsors of  Bakery Manufacturing Company of the Year

Lauras International specialises in the delivery of rapid improvement within fastmoving medium- to large- consumer goods manufacturers.

‘Rapid Lean' implementations involve a joint top down/bottom up approach that is focused on increasing the rate of improvement achieved by site personnel - site teams are helped to achieve impressive results, and in living the journey go on to sustain an increased rate of improvement.

The simplified ‘Rapid Lean' toolkit is designed to explain the why - not just the what - of powerful improvement tools, and enables shopfloor personnel to solve longstanding problems, and focus on the right areas. Refined management engagement combined with appropriate coaching and mentoring ensures the improvement is owned by the local management, and long-term sustainability embedded.

Each member of the team has real manufacturing experience, mostly engineers or food technologists who have gone on to manage a factory or a significant part of one.

Customised programmes, significant results, performance guarantees, and strong recommendations from both blue-chip and venture capital owned businesses denotes a business that is growing fast, and forging partnerships with key businesses sector by sector.

Silver Stone Search & Selection

Sponsors of Ambient Manufacturing Company of the Year and the Small Company of the Year Award

Silver Stone Search & Selection prides itself on being quality focused and passionate about what it does. It gains true satisfaction by helping to shape the futures of its clients and candidates.

This professional recruitment business has real depth of food manufacturing knowledge gained through years of experience working within the food industry. It recruits across all disciplines and in all sectors including chilled, ambient and frozen environments for major brands and own-label suppliers.

Silver Stone Search & Selection works hard to attract the right candidates and ensure that there is a high level of communication between itself, candidates and clients alike. Whether this is by visiting a site and taking a full job brief through to answering any questions raised through a process, the company will fully understand your requirements then work tirelessly to fulfil your needs.Silver Stone can pretty much be contacted at any time of the day or night and always aims to make working with the company as easy as possible.

Silver Stone prides itself on being one of the major players in the market and realises that its continued success is measured by its continued delivery.

Zurich

Sponsors of the Judges Special Award

Zurich Financial Services Group (Zurich) is a leading multi-line insurance provider with a global network of subsidiaries and offices.

Zurich's UK General Insurance division is the UK Branch of Zurich Insurance plc, part of the Zurich Group. It supplies personal, commercial and local authority insurance through a variety of distribution channels. Based at locations across the UK, with large sites in London, Glasgow, Cardiff, Birmingham, Leeds, Swindon, Newcastle Farnborough and the Isle of Man, the division employs approximately 4,200 people.

As a leading UK corporate insurer, Zurich has always worked closely with brokers and their customers aiming to share knowledge, anticipate trends and provide the food and beverage sector with the best possible insurance solutions. It has successfully been helping to protect manufacturing companies against risk for over 135 years. In a complicated industry that's changing rapidly and with food and beverage manufacturers vulnerable to increasing regulations, Zurich's insight helps companies to understand current and emerging risks so they can better safeguard their businesses.

Benefits from industry-specific protection include: expert strategic and operational risk management; supply chain insurance; and advice on mergers and acquisitions.

Michael Page Engineering & Manufacturing

Sponsors of the Table Centres

Michael Page Engineering & Manufacturing was established in 2001 and now operates out of 11 offices across the UK offering both permanent and interim contract solutions across a diverse range of job types. These include Operations, Production, Engineering, Quality, Technical, HSE, Continuous Improvement and Project Management.

At Michael Page we recognise that both our clients and candidates are unique and that our solutions must reflect this. To tackle your assignment, we need to establish what is unique about it. Our nationwide, in-house teams are comprised of recruitment specialists who pride themselves on their ability to add value. One of these experts will be your dedicated point of contact for the duration of the assignment and will leverage this proximity to get a feel for the culture of your business, the motivation behind the hire and the challenges of the role.

Teams are broken down to focus on sector, salary level and location so you will always deal with someone who knows your job market inside out providing a range of tailored solutions to meet client requirements quickly and cost efficiently.

Nigel Wright Consultancy

Sponsors of the VIP Champagne Reception

For more than 20 years Nigel Wright Recruitment have been brining together high calibre candidates and world class organisation.

The business currently operates through its network of offices across Western Europe and has the capacity to conduct business in 16 different languages. The company's national and international operation specialises in the consumer sector, with a particular focus on Food and Drink, where it covers a full range of business critical roles at senior management and board level. Our consultants, many with backgrounds from the sector, are committed to delivering a quality service to clients and candidates alike.

Hygiene Group

Sponsors of the Awards Brochure

Established for over 25 years, Hygiene Group is the market leader in specialist cleaning and hygiene services to the food manufacturing and processing industry.

Hygiene has a detailed understanding of the integral role of hygiene services in the food sector, with a highly qualified, enthusiastic and committed 900-strong workforce. Clients include Carlsberg, Walkers Crisps, United Biscuits and Haribo.

Along with adding value and advancing already high standards of service, delivery and accountability, Hygiene's mission is to transform the industry through world-class innovation. Hygiene invests heavily in research and development as well as employee training to ensure unrivalled service provision.