skills acTion Plan for The food and Beverage secTor - Department of ...

• An aging population in most food and beverage sub
sectors with approximately 45% of those in farming
and fruit and crop growing aged 45 years or older in
2001. This compares with 35% of the total workforce.
• Food and beverage consumers are now better
educated about the benefits of healthy food, impacting
on the types of skills needed in the food and beverage
workforce.
• Employment locations in the food and beverage sector
in 2003 are more evenly dispersed relative to the
manufacturing industry and the economy. The food and
beverage sector has less concentration in the three
main centres of New Zealand. Only 45.1% of FTEs work
in one of the three main centres compared to 58.9%
for the manufacturing industry and 60.7% for the
economy as a whole. Food and beverage FTEs are also
much higher in Otago and Southland than either the
manufacturing industry or the economy as a whole 2 .
Anecdotal evidence suggests that:
• On average total jobs filled in food and beverage are
significantly seasonal in nature compared with non food
and beverage jobs.
• Food and beverage worker turnover rate is higher than
for non food and beverage industries.
• There is significant dependence on immigrants with
short term work permits especially in the seasonal
businesses (eg. fruit picking).
• Growing need for ‘top talent’ that can add value to
existing product ranges and technology advances and
fulfil challenging new roles most of which are related
to food health, science, technology and research.
• Increasing need for employers and employees to
maximise productivity gains by adopting new technology
(capital investment) and to complement this with
improvements in labour productivity and multi-factor
productivity (ie. the amount of output produced in
relation to inputs of both capital and labour).
• There is a general perception that food and beverage
careers are not attractive, therefore effecting
recruitment and retention and creating skills shortages
in some key occupations.
2. “Food and Beverage Sector Taskforce (2005) “Discussion Paper on New Zealand’s Food
and Beverage Sector”, Wellington, New Zealand, ”.
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