Expert claims Irish food industry not realising potential as economic driver

IRELAND’S food industry continues to lag behind in product development and in research and development expenditure, and is not achieving its potential as a major driver of economic development, it was claimed yesterday.

Professor Liam Donnelly, Teagasc’s director of food research and head of Moorepark Food Research Centre, warned the industry will be by-passed by the knowledge economy unless it raises the level of its ambitions in technological innovation and increases its R and D capability.

“Over the past two decades there has been little domestic improvement in the degree of product sophistication by our two largest food sectors, meat and dairy, which continue to manufacture predominantly commodity products... This relatively static position at home contrasts with the undoubted success of some companies in establishing manufacturing operations abroad,” he said.

Prof Donnelly said the sluggish innovation performance of the domestic food sector must be seen in the light of Ireland’s emphasis on the knowledge economy as a key target of future economic development. A critical success factor for companies that will drive the knowledge economy is that they have the R and D capability to achieve international leadership in inventiveness through specialised teams and to take a longer term view of returns on R and D investment.

The successful development of a more knowledge intense industrial sector is a sine qua non of Ireland’s future economic prosperity, and this must involve domestic industry as much as foreign owned multinationals. “It is not an unreasonable expectation that the food industry, being our largest indigenous industrial sector, should play a significant part in achieving that national aim,” he said. Prof Donnelly was speaking at an open day in Fermoy that celebrated 20 years of research at Moorepark.

Details of a new Teagasc Programme of Technology Support for small and medium sized food enterprises were outlined. It will operate in partnership between Enterprise Ireland and Teagasc’s Moorepark and Ashtown Food Research centres and will be staffed by technologists whose role will be to accumulate and transfer information directly applicable to food companies.