Food and Drink Industry 16 – 22 March: Featuring Pars Foods and Pilgrim’s Europe
- Pars Foods has opened a new 14,500 sq. ft production facility to support rising demand for its Pie Sports brand.
- Pilgrim’s Europe has launched a new Butchery Academy at its Westerleigh site near Bristol to help address skills shortages in the meat sector.
The UK food industry has seen no shortage of challenges in recent years, from supply chain strain and labour shortages to shifting consumer demand and rising operational pressure.
Against that backdrop, two announcements from Pars Foods and Pilgrim’s Europe stand out for the right reasons. One is investing in scale to meet fast-growing demand in the bakery segment.
The other is investing in people to protect the long-term future of skilled meat production. Taken together, they offer a sharp snapshot of how food manufacturing businesses are responding with ambition rather than hesitation.
Pars Foods Expands to Meet Rising Demand for Pie Sports
Scottish pie maker Pars Foods has announced the opening of a new 14,500 sq. ft production facility, marking a significant step forward for a business that has built strong momentum around its Pie Sports brand.
Founded in 1998 by Brian Sarafilovic, the company says the new site will complement its existing 15,500 sq. ft bakery in Glasgow and help it respond more effectively to growing demand across retail, foodservice and hospitality.
The decision comes after what the business describes as a standout year in Scotland, with increased sales and fresh opportunities driving the need for additional production capacity.
This is not an expansion for expansion’s sake. It is a response to real market traction. Over the past 12 months, Pars Foods has secured listings with major grocery names including Aldi, Lidl and Scotmid Co-op, giving its products stronger visibility and wider reach in the retail sector.
Its flagship Pie Sports range has also built a distinctive position by bridging retail and sport. Alongside supermarket listings, the brand currently supplies matchday products to several Scottish professional football clubs, including St Mirren, Partick Thistle, Falkirk and St Johnstone.
That blend of mainstream retail presence and sporting sector relevance has clearly helped the brand stand out in a competitive category.
A Milestone Moment for a Scottish Bakery Business
For founder Brian Sarafilovic, the new factory represents more than added square footage. It represents the next stage of a business that has outgrown its previous footprint.
He described the development as an important milestone in the company’s growth, saying that demand for Pie Sports had exceeded expectations. He also underlined that the investment would allow the business to continue scaling responsibly while maintaining the quality customers have come to expect.
That balance matters. In food production, expansion can sometimes raise questions around consistency, standards and operational control. Pars Foods is clearly keen to position this move as one built not only on ambition, but on maintaining the quality and reliability that helped it win those customers in the first place.
The factory is also expected to improve production efficiency and create new jobs within Scotland’s bakery sector and the wider United Kingdom bakery industry, adding another layer of significance to the announcement.
Confidence in Scotland’s Bakery Sector
The wider industry has welcomed the move. The CEO of Scottish Bakers praised the development, describing it as a powerful sign of confidence in Scotland’s bakery sector and a boost for a highly skilled and well-loved industry.
That endorsement is important because it frames the expansion as part of a broader story. This is not just about one company doing well. It speaks to the potential strength still present in regional food manufacturing when businesses back themselves, invest locally and respond quickly to demand.
At a time when many food businesses are being forced to think carefully about costs, capacity and recruitment, Pars Foods is sending a clear message: there is still room for growth where product demand, brand positioning and operational planning come together effectively.
Pilgrim’s Europe Turns to Skills with New Butchery Academy
While Pars Foods is increasing physical capacity, Pilgrim’s Europe is tackling a different but equally urgent issue: the future of skilled labour in the meat industry.
The manufacturer has launched a new Butchery Academy at its Westerleigh site near Bristol, with the first cohort of trainees already in place. The initiative is designed to bring fresh talent into the UK meat sector through paid training, recognised qualifications and long-term career opportunities.
The timing is significant. The UK food manufacturing sector, and the meat industry in particular, is facing a well-documented shortage of skilled butchers. At the same time, there has been a decline in the number of abattoirs serving local farmers, placing additional pressure on infrastructure and skills pipelines.
Pilgrim’s Europe is positioning the academy as a practical response to those challenges. Rather than waiting for talent to appear, it is building a route in.
Building Craft Skills and Long-Term Career Pathways
According to the company, trainees joining the academy will be taught through a combination of classroom learning and hands-on experience with on-site teams. The programme is designed not only to develop technical butchery skills, but also to equip participants with key knowledge in health, safety and food hygiene.
That broader training approach reflects the realities of modern food production. Skilled craftsmanship remains essential, but so too does compliance, safety awareness and readiness for regulated production environments.
Pilgrim’s Europe says successful trainees can become a Grade 2 Butcher within 12 weeks, earning a competitive wage while training. The company is also offering ongoing development opportunities for those who want to progress further to Grade 1.
This kind of structured pathway matters because it makes the role feel tangible and attainable.
For younger workers or career changers, the sector can often seem difficult to access or poorly understood. Clear progression routes help turn a traditional trade into a modern career proposition.
Supporting Farmers, Sites and Supply Chains
The business has also been careful to connect the academy to a bigger operational picture. The site director at Westerleigh, who is also the lead sponsor of the Butchery Academy, stressed that access to a local abattoir remains a major priority for farmers.
In that context, investment in people and butchery capability is not simply a staffing exercise. It is critical to the ongoing viability of the Westerleigh site and Pilgrim’s broader farm-to-fork quality British pork model.
That is a crucial point. Food manufacturing does not operate in isolation. It sits within a network that includes farmers, processors, logistics teams, retailers and local communities. Skills shortages in one part of that chain can have knock-on effects across the whole system.
Pilgrim’s Europe is therefore presenting the academy as both a workforce initiative and a resilience measure, aimed at strengthening the UK food supply chain and supporting the communities tied to it.
The company’s chief people officer reinforced that view, saying that building a skilled and sustainable workforce means creating entry routes, strong development pathways and long-term career opportunities.
In that sense, the academy is not just about recruitment. It is about retention, progression and future-proofing.
A Sector Responding to Warning Signs
The launch also lands at a time of growing concern about manufacturing talent in the UK more broadly. A recent Nestlé report warned of an impending skills crisis, highlighting that manufacturing remains largely invisible to Gen Z.
That finding should not be dismissed as a branding problem alone. It points to a deeper issue around perception, awareness and access. Many younger people may not see food manufacturing as innovative, skilled or full of opportunity, despite the industry’s scale and importance.
Pilgrim’s Europe’s academy can therefore be read as part of a wider answer to that challenge. It puts real structure around training, creates a visible route into the industry and gives practical meaning to the idea of a manufacturing career.
What This Means for Food Manufacturing and Food Production
The significance of these two announcements goes beyond the individual companies involved. For the wider food manufacturing and food production landscape, they point to two of the sector’s biggest priorities: scaling output efficiently and securing skilled labour for the future.
Pars Foods shows how manufacturers can respond to commercial success with targeted investment in production infrastructure. New facilities, improved efficiency and job creation all strengthen the sector’s ability to meet demand without compromising on supply.
Pilgrim’s Europe, meanwhile, highlights that factories and facilities alone are not enough. Without trained people, specialist knowledge and credible career pathways, production growth becomes much harder to sustain.
Together, these developments suggest that the strongest food businesses will be those that invest on both fronts, pairing operational expansion with long-term workforce planning. That is good news not just for producers, but for retailers, hospitality operators, farmers and consumers who all depend on a stable, capable and resilient supply chain.
Conclusion
From a fast-growing Scottish pie maker expanding to meet demand, to a major meat manufacturer investing in the next generation of skilled butchers, Pars Foods and Pilgrim’s Europe are each addressing a different side of the same industry challenge. One is building more room to produce. The other is building more people to produce with confidence.
Both moves carry weight. Both reflect belief in the future. And both show that in the UK food industry, progress is not only about reacting to pressure, but about making deliberate investments that strengthen production, protect standards and prepare businesses for what comes next.
In a sector that depends on both capacity and craftsmanship, that is a message worth paying close attention to.
News Credits:
Pars Foods to open new factory after runaway success of ‘Pie Sports’ brand
Pilgrim’s Europe set up Butchery Academy to plug meat industry’s skills gap
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