Food and drink companies from across the region are set to benefit from a new, cutting edge e-business portal, ‘FoodPort’, by Food Northwest.
Food Northwest, the organisation set up to lead the food and drink industry and to help grow the Northwest regional economy, has worked in partnership with AIMES, a technology transfer centre at the University of Liverpool, to develop new ways for food companies in the region to do business, become more efficient and improve their profitability.
‘FoodPort’ is an innovative ‘e-business marketplace,’ which businesses can register on, only via the Food Northwest website www.foodnw.co.uk. Available to all food and drink businesses in Cheshire, Cumbria, Greater Manchester, Lancashire and Merseyside, FoodPort uses the latest technology to bring businesses together and is safe, secure and easy to use.
Business in the food sector is increasingly being conducted outside traditional market environments, with more and more trading taking place in an e-marketplace. Consultation with the sector identified the need for better information, easier networking with other businesses, joint procurement and for small businesses, easy to use ICT systems. Based on this, FoodPort has been developed as a research and development project that will run until December 2008 and will allow businesses to develop their e-business capabilities at low risk.
FoodPort provides the opportunity for Northwest food and drink businesses to reduce the cost of commodities through joint buying with other companies. Its procurement service enables companies to compete by enhancing their buying power, for example on commodities such as packaging. An initial scoping exercise which took place in 2007, with 10 companies, has seen those involved realising savings of up to 10 per cent.
The project provides three further areas of support*, including; affordable access to high quality, up-to-date information from Leatherhead Food International, after an initial free, three-month trial period; a free online business networking tool linking individuals within the Northwest food and drink community, and an affordable, managed computing service, offering access to Microsoft Office applications and the Internet without the need for in-house support.
Pat Foreman, chief executive of Food Northwest, said: “Our aim is to help food businesses in the region to improve their productivity and to grow. FoodPort will help companies to make connections with other individuals and businesses within the industry, gain access to information to increase efficiency and profitability, and find new ways to do business through channels to new markets. Ultimately we want to make them more competitive in the rapidly developing market environments of the 21st century.”
With the creation of Food Portal opportunities are being created for food and drink businesses of specific regions of the UK.
Logo from Food Northwest.
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