Improving the resilience to shocks of Scottish food and drink supply chains

Challenges

The food and drink industry contributes approximately £14 billion to Scotland’s economy and accounts for one in five manufacturing jobs. Scotland has approximately 18,850 food and drink businesses, which employ about 115,400 people. Whilst all the supply chains that comprise the food and drink industry have been subject to shocks, such as the UK’s departure from the European Union and the global Covid-19 pandemic, particular supply chains have suffered individual chain shocks or are subject to stresses.

Covid-19 and Brexit have brought renewed interest in the analysis of resilient food supply chains. As of 2022, there are no in-depth supply chain analyses because both events are still recent, and the data are not available. An example of the type of analysis carried out is Garnett et al. (2020), which provides a broad analysis of factors that may affect the vulnerability of the UK food sector such as insufficient capacity in domestic food production, just-in-time supply chains, and the Brexit-related labour market. It is, therefore, important to elaborate on a framework that may help to assess the resilience of food supply chains both aggregated and individually.

Other key drivers of the project are:

• Good Food Nation policy –ensuring food companies are a thriving feature of the economy and places where people want to work.
• Scottish Government plans for supporting the food and drink industry.
• Scottish   Government   plans   to   promote   sustainable   production   and procurement as it wants domestic produce that is increasingly healthy and environmentally sound.
• Ambition 2030: Industry Strategy for Growth indicates that one of the challenges of the industry is that success and growth must translate into greater profitability at the farmgate and on the fishing boat.

Questions

Solutions

Our project is developing tools and a framework to serve as the basis for future reviewing of the resilience of supply chains. These tools are used to understand the vulnerabilities and strengths within the Scottish food and drink supply chain – as a whole and sub-industry specific. The supply chains we are considering are pigs, beef, dairy and potatoes. Finally, within each supply chain, the project is identifying practical applications of the framework to demonstrate the value of investment and novel forms of intervention.

Establish frameworks to assess the resilience of the supply chains

We are developing tools and a framework to underpin future reviewing of the resilience of the supply chains. This will be done at two levels: macro (e.g., food supply chain) and sub-sectoral (e.g., beef supply chain). We are performing a literature review focusing on the two levels of resilience analysis for agri-food supply chains which considers shocks and stresses. Next, we are formulating frameworks for each of the two levels of the supply chain and constructing a directory of the whole Scottish food supply chain to help us with sector analyses.

Resilience analysis at the aggregated level

Next, we are performing a resilience analysis at the aggregated level using our new framework. From this, we are analysing the whole Scottish food and drink supply chain and identifying factors at the aggregated level that reduces its fragility to internal and external shocks. The main shocks being considered are the UK’s exit from the European Union and Covid-19 pandemic as well as related issues, such as migrant labour and net-zero goal.

Resilience analysis at specific supply chains

Finally, we are carrying out a resilience analysis at the sub-sectoral level using our newly developed framework. The selected supply chains are major ones, namely: pigs, dairy, beef, potatoes, soft fruit, and sheep. We are identifying factors within each chain to reduce its fragility to internal and external shocks.

Project Partners

Progress