What would make UK food businesses adopt more robots?

Gail has been writing about manufacturing technologies across several trade publications for over 30 years. She has worked as a business-to-business journalist with such titles as Food Manufacture, Fine Food Digest, Artisan magazine, The Grocer, British Baker, Builders Merchants Journal and DIY Week. While editor of Packaging News she won several awards and for the last 13 years she has been editor of Machinery Update, the machinery-only journal published by Automate UK. She stepped down from the magazine at the end of 2023 to work on projects for Automate UK including this new UK Automation Forum.

Martin is a 35-year veteran of the food industry. He has a vast experience of central and site-based engineering and operations roles, responsible for both maintenance excellence and capital projects. For the last 15 years he has been working at Engineering Director level across multiple sites in the UK for FMCG businesses such as PepsiCo, Morrisons, Allied Bakeries and has been with Greggs since 2021. He has worked directly with over 70 different factories ranging from abattoirs through to flower bouquet production.

Susannah King is a founder and partner of Aquitech LLP. She has over 20 years’ experience in the food and beverage industries with her career spanning both consultancy and industry. She has led and delivered a range of projects with a focus on feasibility, strategic business planning, due diligence, and capital project management to global clients. Prior to founding Aquitech in 2023, Susannah has had roles in major food and beverage companies such as Kerry, Heineken, Cargill and Yeo valley with key skills in project management, technical and quality management and engineering equipment design. She has significant experience in advising FMCG clients and private investors on operational efficiency and has led many projects developing automation solutions.

Elected to the Board of Directors of Automate UK in 2018, James is the Managing Director at Grunwald UK – specialist suppliers of cup filling and sealing machinery, packing and dosing machines for the food and dairy industry throughout the UK, Ireland and North America. He was appointed Chairman of the Automate UK Group of Associations in December 2022 and has overseen the complete rebrand of the organisation.

John has spent the last 16 years in Fresh Foods at M&S and is currently covering Ireland and Healthy Categories. He is also Innovation lead for automation in M&S Fresh food and has always had an interest on automation/robotics since joining the major retailer.

Rosie has 14 years’ experience in the robotics industry and joined Reeco Automation as Managing Director in April 2024. In addition to five years spent as a director at RMGroup, Rosie maintains a position on the board with industry association Automate UK as a robotics system integrator representative for the British Automation and Robot Association (BARA).