SINGAPORE: A skills framework for the food manufacturing industry was launched on Wednesday (Jul 18), as part of the sector’s industry transformation map.
The new framework aims to build and maintain a strong talent pool in the sector, by identifying job roles, career pathways for progression and emerging skills required for the future, such as recipe formulation and advanced processing technology.
Advertisement Training programmes for skills upgrading and mastery will also be made available for workers, who Minister for Trade and Industry Chan Chun Sing identified as the most important ingredient for success.
During a visit to local flavour house KH Roberts, which opened a new integrated flavours manufacturing facility on Wednesday, Mr Chan also identified other ingredients of success for small-and-medium enterprises.
This included venturing overseas, investing in innovation and research, paying attention to quality assurance, and collaboration with other companies and research and development institutes.
By doing so, the food manufacturing could become a “competitive advantage” for the Republic.
Advertisement Advertisement “This may not be obvious to many other people who see us a land-scarce, labour-tight market,” said Mr Chan.
“But because we are land-scarce and labour-tight, we no longer want to compete on the basis of price. We want to compete on the quality of our workers and workforce, the quality of our products, our ability to innovate and collaborate,” Mr Chan said.
“And all this will certainly beat just pure price competition that other competitors might be focused on.”
The new framework was jointly developed by government agencies SkillsFuture Singapore, Workforce Singapore and Enterprise Singapore, together with industry stakeholders such as employers, associations and unions.
According to the Ministry of Trade and Industry, the food manufacturing sector employed over 48,000 workers last year.
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