Nominee Summary
Digital Dairy Chain is transforming the dairy sector through innovation, collaboration and growth in South and West Scotland and Cumbria. We reach across Dumfries and Galloway, Ayrshire, Lanarkshire and Glasgow. The project was awarded £21m of Strength in Places funding from UK Research and Innovation in 2022 and can offer any business or individual involved in the dairy supply chain across Cumbria, South and West Scotland a range of services to support innovation, improve productivity, stimulate job creation and economic growth.
The approach of your nominee
The project overall is designed to address the priority needs of the dairy sector (based on the UK Dairy Roadmap), the research excellence and absorptive capacity of the region to adopt and exploit the R&D outputs: Decarbonising dairy. Waste minimisation and resource recirculation. Reduced environmental impact and sustainability (biodiversity, soil and air). Novel and high-value products from dairy. Digitalisation Research and development advancements have been made across the region such as the Genocells project which has been a collaboration between partners to bring a Digital Demostrator project to the UK. Greater insight into an individual cow’s genetic potential is improving feed use efficiency and reduce environmental impact. First Milk members are the first British farmers to use the ‘Genocells’ technology to report individual somatic cell counts from a single bulk milk sample using genomic information of the cows in the herd The project also has a successful, oversubscribed Innovation Brokerage. To date the project Innovation Brokers have helped to secure £1,538,670 in grant funding by providing substantive support to project teams by applying into the DDC Innovation Voucher and CR&D grant competitions, as well as other external funding. 67 projects have been awarded to date and making improvements to business efficiencies and research across local authorities. Charity partner SmartSTEMs has engaged with 19,871 primary and secondary school children in workshops based around the STEM in the dairy industry, bringing children on to farm or into dairy processors to learn more about careers in the industry.
Overcoming Challenges
Spanning national boundaries, Cumbria and SW Scotland produce 1.9bn litres of milk annually. As the UK’s second largest milk field, dairy manufacturing is an important source of economic activity and employment. The programme geography is remote and rural. Regional GVA is well below the national average, high-value employment opportunities are limited and business innovation activity is patchy. The impacts of Brexit and changes to agricultural support will be significant. This project focuses on Agri-Food manufacturing, sustainable exploitation of natural capital, and digitalisation; all are priorities for regional growth. With 63% of our local authority areas having a negative prosperity gap there is significant untapped human capital. Social inclusivity goals cut across our activities particularly focusing on advancing opportunity for young people and women who are under-represented in dairying, STEM and business innovation Despite these challenges we have supported businesses across our project area with £3m in R&D funding and half a million in small grant funding so far. We have also developed a number of innovations that will support the dairy industry as a whole once commercialised and disseminated.
The impact of innovation
The team are working together to apply for an EPSRC Programme Grant in 2025 to build upon the established partnerships and to continue the impact within the region. Think Dairy Expo taking place in September 2025 inviting 500 school children to a mock cattle auction with opportunities to engage with employers and skills agencies across the country The official launch of the Think Dairy Talent Forum to advance work in closing the skills shortage with multiple key organisations working together to address the challenges Knowledge Exchange events across many of our research projects The opening of the Dairy Innovation Centre in SRUC which Digital Dairy Chain is part of – a wider project called Dairy Nexus will implement the work of the Digital Twining technology research and development that has taken place Working with partners such as Codebase and NMIS to allow farmers and supply chain businesses to join in the technology space for the advancement of digitalisation in the industry SRUC has now successfully been awarded a one-year extension to the project allowing us to continue the great work that is happening Farms and businesses supported are reporting cost efficiencies from implementing digital approaches and also changes in energy consumption and sustainability.
