About Us

The Rural Food Skillnet was established by existing food companies and CLE – Comhar LEADER na hEireann (the Irish LEADER network) to help rurally based food producers achieve growth and competitiveness by providing training to owners and staff in food businesses all over Ireland. Funds have been made available to address common training needs of these rural food companies and the Rural Food Skillnet plan to train over 1,000 employees over the next two years.

This training aims to assist food companies respond to the ever increasing requirement stemming from state and EU legislation in the area of food production, international standards of hygiene and customer expectations. The Skillnet also hopes to assist members develop innovative ways of becoming competitive through training and further professional development.

The objective of the programme is to formulate and deliver training that is tailored to meet the needs of the food companies and affordable to them. Rural food Skillnet training is driven by the needs of the food company, relavant to the particular business, delivered locally at times that suit and grant aided up to 75%.

For the owner/manager of the food company, accessible training will upgrade skills by learning new strategies for business development in areas such as general financial management, retail management, product development and brand development. Training of company staff will help to boost morale, leading to improved staff retention, job satisfaction and new performance standards. Staff training is available in areas such as Hygiene/HACCP, customer service, health & safety and many more.Investment in training for managers and employees of food business is an investment in securing the future performance of the business.

The Rural Food Skillnet also provides a variety of training programmes aimed at those who have not yet established a food business but who are thinking of start up. For entrepreneurs who are wishing to start a food company but are unsure of where to begin the Rural Food Skillnet works closely with CLE – Comhar LEADER na hEireann in providing the help to needed to set up.

Training leading to FETAC qualifications is funded by the Rural Food Skillnet allowing employees of the food sector to obtain a recognisable qualification for their skills.

A special area of interest of the Rural Food Skillnet is Farmers Markets. A specifically designed training programme has been developed entitled Developing and Sustaining a Farmers Market which operates on a market by market basis providing markets and individual stallholders with invaluable advice on how to ensure the growth of the market.