A new Centre for Innovation Excellence in Livestock (CIEL) is looking to attract Government funding under the Agri-Tech strategy to help towards the building of a centre of excellence and is being led by BPEX.
Any Government funding received will have to be matched by contributions from industry partners and this is now being sought.
The focus of CIEL is to develop industry-led, commercially-sustainable innovative research and development capabilities from across the beef, sheep, pig, dairy and poultry sectors that generate wealth and business competitiveness through increased profitability of the sectors.
The Centre for Innovation Excellence will:
- Target animal performance, investigating and improving robustness through the delivery of research in the applied and pre-competitive sectors accessible for all
- Foster innovation and create globally-valued knowledge for UK operating companies
- Invest in enhancing the existing UK research platform, expanding capacity and attracting global talent
- Provide state-of-the-art, facilities and capabilities to address the fundamental challenges and opportunities identified by the livestock sector.
Andrew Knowles, head of technical at BPEX and one of the leaders of the bid, said: “Government funding is available to produce a game-change in UK agricultural science and the delivery of that science to producers under the Agri-Tech Centres of Excellence project.
“We have formed a proposal and are hoping to secure industry support in principle for this submission by 27th March,” Knowles added.
“At the moment, we are keen to contact commercial partners interested in pre-competitive research to give their backing, in principle, to CIEL.”
This story was originally published on a previous version of the Meat Management website and so there may be some missing images and formatting issues.
