91Pro

91Pro work with a wide range of companies within the food manufacturing sector when delivering our Food Industry Technical Professional degree apprenticeship. Companies include Pilgrim’s Europe, where Kerry Roberts started employment in June 2022.

Kerry started her apprenticeship journey in November 2022 and is currently in year two of a five-year programme. She joined Pilgrim’s Europe in June 2022 after owning a butcher’s shop for 10 years.  The lease on the shop came up for renewal, so she had to decide whether to continue in the business or was it time for a change. She didn’t want to be only known as “Kerry from the butchers”, so applied for a job as quality lead with the business. Kerry said it was a great opportunity for her – she always had an interest in food quality and safety, so this was the perfect career option for her.

This was also her first formal job interview. Soon after she started her new role, she was offered the opportunity to join the apprenticeship scheme. She had not been in formal education since finishing her GCSE’s in 2010 but secured a place on the apprenticeship as a mature student. The Food Industry Technical Professional degree apprenticeship is delivered in block teaching sessions and time is available during these weeks for apprentices to access academic support. The support is also available online outside of the teaching weeks and Kerry has accessed this to help develop academic skills.

The Food Industry Technical Professional degree apprenticeship includes a series of work-based projects, where apprentices are required to apply learning to a real-work situation. Kerry chose to look at a particular issue with a production line for sweetcure bacon. The site in Bodmin produces bacon for different supermarkets and brands, and all have a different process line within the factory. This particular line was a different design to others, and it was creating losses in product. There were also potential issues with food safety, as the design of the line caused the product to stick together; this means there is not an even distribution of product for chilling.

Kerry conducted trials on the line and gathered information about waste and consistency of quality. She applied learning from the degree element of the apprenticeship to the creation of her analysis and report. The report was submitted as her assignment for the degree and also presented to her employers and Kerry was able to use root cause analysis techniques to put forward a proposal to purchase new equipment. She was able to show that the cost of losses exceeded the investment in new equipment, and that within 24 weeks, a new line would have paid for itself.

Kerry has been supported by the business in her apprenticeship journey and she said that her line manager, Sam Wotton, Technical Manager, has allocated a day per week for off the job training. They look at modules studied within the academic year and where needed, Sam has put Kerry forward for additional training courses and has also arranged a visit to a cheese factory, so she can understand different processes and quality checks for other food products. The Bodmin site director, Dan Inch talked about Kerry’s progress since starting in her job role “the praise garnered from the course leader underscores Kerry’s substantial progress since embarking on this journey” Kerry has achieved a distinction for her project and she is looking forward to finishing this academic year and starting her third year on programme.

The course is designed to enable apprentices to apply learning in the workplace and this is one of many examples of where academic study has been applied and resulted in cost savings for the business.

If you would like to find out more about how the Food Industry Technical Professional Degree Apprenticeship can help your business, or if you are interested in applying to the course starting in September, contact the apprenticeships team at Harper Addams University: apprenticeships@harper-adams.ac.uk