Capital grant for NI food manufacturing an urgent priority

The call follows the announcement of a €100million capital investment scheme by the Republic of Ireland government with a 30% support rate for RoI food manufacturing companies.

Wales, Scotland and England already have similar schemes in place with support rates of between 20-40%. The fact that Northern Ireland companies cannot avail of such funding puts them at a significant competitive disadvantage, according to NIFDA’s Executive Director Michael Bell.

“We have spent three years lobbying for this grant and despite our best efforts the process was halted last summer following the rejection of a proposal submitted to the Assembly,” said Michael. “There were 15 or more business cases submitted to Invest Northern Ireland. Most of these cases were delayed while our competitors are marching on with the backing of their respective Governments and repositioning themselves with our customers. Our closest competitors also benefit from significant funding for food export marketing, which again we do not have. This is competitive disadvantage in the starkest sense. This weakness is obviously further magnified with COVID-19 and Brexit.

“A capital grant scheme will drive innovation, productivity and enable the Northern Ireland Food & Drink Industry to win value-added business. This is a priority that is also understood by our farming community and the UFU have been steadfast with NIFDA in highlighting this weakness to the Department of the Economy here in Northern Ireland. This is our most urgent and clear ask. We therefore call on Minister Dodds to urgently address this strategic weakness our industry has been subject to here in Northern Ireland.”

The €100m Capital Investment Scheme recently announced in the Republic of Ireland is managed by Enterprise Ireland and will open for applications on 28th January 2021 and will take the form of a competitive call.

The maximum aid intensity will be up to 30% of the eligible investment costs with a maximum direct grant of up to €5m per project.

Projects must have total eligible capital expenditure of at least €1m, up to a maximum of €25m.

A maximum grant per undertaking of €10m can be approved under the first call and €12m over the lifetime of the Scheme.

The Scheme is open to large, medium or small enterprises. Eligible companies will be approved exporting enterprises, which are engaged in the primary processing of certain agricultural products (beef, pig meat, sheep meat, poultry, dairy).

The objective of the Scheme is to strengthen and improve the resilience of primary food processing companies, through supporting long term transformative capital investment projects, and achieving higher value add by implementing new product and/or market diversification strategies. Projects will not be principally focused on the processing of increased volumes of raw materials.