Dairy Crest’s Partnership With Harper Adams University Wins Times Higher Education Award
Dairy Crest, in collaboration with Harper Adams University, has won the Most Innovative Contribution to Business-University Collaboration award at the Times Higher Education Awards 2016, held in association with Santander Universities. The awards, now in their twelfth year, shine a spotlight on the outstanding achievements of institutions, teams and individuals working in UK higher education.
This new award was given to the business that demonstrated the most imaginative and effective partnership with a university or universities.
With its decision to relocate research and development and technical staff to Harper Adams University, Dairy Crest achieved impressive results and is a worthy inaugural winner of this award.
Dairy Crest’s research and development (R&D) and technical team were the first to explore the possibility, with the help of Harper Adams, of moving on to the University campus. Dairy Crest management approved the plan and, after an investment of £4 million to create a new innovation centre on Harper Adams’ campus, 40 R&D staff have taken up residence at the university.
Mark Allen, chief executive of Dairy Crest, comments: “Developing an effective innovation pipeline is extremely important for Dairy Crest. We have invested £4 million in the new purpose-built, state-of-the-art Innovation Centre for our research and development and technical departments. By locating the Dairy Crest Innovation Centre on the Harper Adams University campus, we are building a partnership with a centre of excellence in food, farming and science education. This Award is a fantastic recognition of a unique partnership which we believe will help drive our important innovation agenda forward. It is also great for Dairy Crest to be working with some of the brightest students who represent the future of food and farming in the UK.”
The Awards judges noted: “Embedding research scientists in one of the country’s top agricultural Universities was a pioneering collaboration in an industry with traditionally low R&D.”
