Deputy Minister hails Value of Welsh food and drink

Deputy Minister for Farming and Food, Rebecca Evans, has welcomed an economic appraisal of the food and drink industry in Wales, which will shine a light on how we doing against our ambition to grow the sector by 30% by 2020, and help focus efforts for the future.

The Value of Welsh Food and Drinks evaluation was undertaken to improve baseline data and knowledge of the industry in Wales, and is another key milestone from the Food and Drink Action Plan which was launched last year.

Rebecca Evans said:

“This work will act as a catalyst to provide a more targeted response to supporting the Welsh food and drinks sector and will ensure we can identify both successes and challenges in the industry as we progress towards achieving the ambitions laid out in the Food and Drink Action Plan, Towards Sustainable Growth.”

The Food and Drink Action Plan identified a need to improve on the industry baseline data and fill knowledge gaps. For the first time, this work brings together a comprehensive and statistically robust suite of measures and key performance indicators (KPIs) for the whole of the food and drinks manufacturing sector and key sub-sectors in primary production.

Rebecca Evans said:

“We have made a commitment to support the Welsh food and drinks sector to achieve a growth target of 30% to £7billion turnover by the year 2020. The economic appraisal work The Value of Welsh Food and Drinks has drawn together a comprehensive and statistically robust suite of economic and other measures which we can now use as a baseline to track progress going forward.