South West Food and Drink (SWFD) has secured £695,000 from the South West Regional Development Agency for a new programme on behalf of the region's food and drink sector.

The Developing Sustainable Food Chains programme is designed to improve the supply of locally-produced food and drink into the region's urban markets. It will do this through identifying current and emerging market opportunities and building the sector's capacity.

SWFD will work with a range of organisations to address the challenges by embarking on a series of initiatives to solve current problems and also prepare the ground for solutions in the future.

Director Christine Marshall said: 'We are delighted to announce this initiative which is the culmination of a lot of hard work by SWFD and our partners throughout the region.

'This is a unique opportunity for businesses to benefit from a truly integrated and innovative project that will enable them to access a range of markets across the region.  

'The importance of how this programme is designed to link with all the other funding streams in the region at this moment in time has been paramount in our minds.

'We needed to ensure that the industry can get the best value out of all the funds that are currently available.

'We anticipate that there will be nine individual projects working with a variety of south west food and drink businesses across the region, providing specialist support across a number of disciplines and types of organisations. The South West RDA has fully supported our proposal, for which we are grateful, and we are convinced that the project will lead to a useful legacy for the region's industry.'