Released from Covid restrictions, the UK Flour Millers
team has been on the road at long last. Director Alex Waugh was invited to brief a group of MPs on a new Parliamentary Food Supply Chain group, established to keep them informed of the current challenges in relation to commodity supply, energy costs, fertiliser, packing, transport and more.
“The take-away from this session was both how wide ranging the impact has been and the enormous scale of cost increases that supply chains face,” Alex says.
Meanwhile Alex Costigliola, who head up our trade policy department, hosted a presentation at the launch event of the new Diet & Health Open Innovation Research Club (OIRC), funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.
The OIRC represents an £11 million investment which will support five innovation hubs over the next five years. The event last month focused on Phase One of the investment that will establish the hubs’ aim to enhance collaboration to address key challenges within the diet, health and nutrition sector.
And senior technical advisor Joe Brennan has been touring the country meeting farmers and breeders.
This month alone he has addressed an audience at the Milling Wheat Conference, outlining why protein is so important to millers and what pressures there are on the protein specification.
He also spoke at an NFU young farmer event, outlining the work we do as an association, and met with plant breeders at Agril in Essex to discuss the latest assessments of the Varieties Working Group, as well as any other breeding issues relevant to the milling industry.
