North East Lincolnshire Council (NELC) submitted a bid for £14M to the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) in June. If the funds had been granted, private business would have invested a further £61M in local food manufacturing and 970 jobs would have been created.
When asked why the bid was refused, a spokesman from BIS told FoodManufacture.co.uk: “It’s a commercial matter and it wouldn’t be appropriate to talk about it.”
Damien Jaines-White, head of economic development at NELC – the team that built the bid – told FoodManufacture.co.uk: “The bid was viewed as strong but the reality is that £2.1bn worth of bids were submitted for £1bn of funding. Unfortunately, our food manufacturing bid was unsuccessful.”
£20M plan to create jobs
Nearby North Lincolnshire Council also submitted a £30M bid with Humber Local Enterprise Partnership, which it won. This included two schemes: £10M for investment in renewables and a £20M plan to create jobs through the creation and expansion of new businesses.
The number of jobs estimated to be created by the Humber scheme were 740 direct and 1,015 indirect. However, Jaines-White could not confirm how many of these would be in the food manufacturing sector.
Jaines-White believed the £30M won for the Humber expansion bid would offer some hope for local food manufacturing.
He said: “It’s been a week of mixed emotions. While we’re disappointed to lose our seafood manufacturing bid, the bid we did win included some help for the food manufacturing sector within it, so all is not lost.”
Mixed emotions
Some of the government funding could be diverted towards Grimsby seafood.
Jaines-White said: “We have a number of schemes within the seafood manufacturing bid that could be aligned to the business expansion programme.”
As for the £61M of private funding pledged to boost the £14M seafood manufacturing fund, Jaines-White believed some private investment could be redirected to local food manufacturing companies via the Humber expansion bid.
He said: “We will continue to work with our private sector partners.
There’s been an approach from the £20M business expansion plan so the funds may well be redirected but there’s a process that needs to happen first.”
Jaines-White said NELC’s economic development team had met with BIS to discuss how the government could further support its local food manufacturing. BIS has asked the team to return with further information on this point.
He said: “We continue to liaise with parties in the seafood manufacturing food sector to ensure its sustainability for the future.
“We’re going to have to work harder to achieve growth in seafood manufacturing but we’re not giving up.
Grimsby seafood plan in numbers
• £2.1bn – the total government funding businesses applied for
• £1bn – the amount of government funding awarded
• £45M – the amount of funds North Lincolnshire Council and North East Lincolnshire Council applied for
• £30M – the amount of money awarded to North Lincolnshire Council
