Food Technology Centre team support small businesses for county contracts

The team based at the Cumbria Rural Enterprise Agency (CREA) Food Technology Centre has been working with Cumbria County Council (CCC) to help the county’s smaller food and drink producers get involved in public procurement. They held a joint seminar held at CREA’s conference centre on Wednesday (26 November), which attracted people from about 20 local businesses.

Graham Lewis was the main seminar speaker. He is Principal Buying Manager in the Strategic and Commercial Procurement Unit of CCC and he has presented at workshops throughout the Northwest and beyond. He was joined by his colleague, Les Hopcroft, who is the Principal Procurement Officer for CCC and who has been running training workshops across Cumbria to encourage local businesses to compete for local contracts.

At the CREA seminar, Graham and Les worked with several companies from the food and drink sector including Saddleback Foods, Low Stanger Farm and Country Fare, showing them how to register on to the public sector’s online procurement systems and make the most of the public procurement process.

“The process is new for everyone and we are keen to make it work for local suppliers,” said Graham. “For instance, when a food contract needed suppliers to be able to give a nutritional analysis of each dish, we helped out to give smaller companies access to the software to enable them to compete. Winning a tender is not just about price but also product quality, sustainable behaviour and a clear indication that a business has processes in place to deliver what they say they will.”

Graham used a real example of a recent fresh food tender, showing why it was structured in a particular way, some of the regulatory requirements of the process and how even small companies could bid for elements of contracts and work together as consortia to meet the requirements and win new business.
“Many of our client companies are concerned that they’re not big enough to go for these tenders,” explained Ian Winchester, a CREA Development Officer who is based in the Food Technology Centre at Redhills near Penrith. “Or they don’t have the time to put together the package of paperwork to get past the first stage or they just don’t know where to start.”

“Hopefully this seminar has reassured them about the opportunities and the support that is available to get over the early hurdles of the process and also encouraged them to think about ways of working together to meet some of the demands for bigger scale or broader scope.”

For further information, please contact

Ian Winchester
CREA Food Technology Centre
01768 891555

Sally Seed
Stoneleigh Communications
01539 624732