Ground-breaking livestock innovation centre launched
11th March 2016
A new £70 million innovation centre will bring together the food industry and academic researchers to transform the productivity of the UK livestock industry.
The Centre of Innovation Excellence in Livestock (CIELivestock) has been allocated £31.7 million funding from the Government’s Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) to set up state-of-the-art facilities across the UK, providing the livestock industry with world-beating access to research.
Additional funding from industry for projects in the Centre and investments by the participating research institutions will bring total investment to over £70 million.
Speaking as the Centre was officially handed over from Innovate UK, Sam Hoste, Interim Chief Operating Officer of CIELivestock, said: "CIEL's objective is to increase the economic performance of UK farming and associated industries by £12 for each £1 spent in research. By bringing together the best research in areas such as breeding, animal health, biotechnology, feeding and genomics the centre will create a state of the art, one-stop-shop for the industry that we expect to increase productivity and drive innovation."
The universities of Edinburgh (The Roslin Institute), Leeds, Nottingham, Newcastle, Aberystwyth, Bristol, Queens (Belfast) and Harper Adams are receiving investment from CIEL, as well as the UK’s leading research institutes including Rothamsted Research, the Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute Northern Ireland (AFBI), Scotland's Rural College (SRUC), Fera and Duchy College.
CIELivestock has been industry led from inception by the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB). Private sector companies across the livestock and food industries have also been key to its development, and associate members signed up to support CIEL at its inception include Devenish Nutrition Ltd, Agrisearch, BSAS, Cranswick Country Food plc, Dunbia Ltd, Origin Group Holdco Ltd, RAFT Solutions Ltd and XLVets UK Ltd.
Richard Kennedy, Group CEO Devenish Nutrition commented: "Devenish owes its success to research and innovation conducted in collaboration with leading UK academics and we look forward to CIEL contributing to the future development of Devenish.
"I am confident that CIEL will uplift the productivity and profitability of the UK's livestock industry as a whole through the unique relationship it offers between our leading academics and diversity of industry partners which have committed to CIEL."
CIELivestock is part of a family of centres launched by the Government, which includes Agrimetrics, the Centre for Crop Health and Production (CHAPS) and Epi-Agri (EPI). For further information on the new centre, please visit www.CIELivestock.co.uk or follow on twitter @CIELivestock1.