Food Portal offers new business opportunities

'FoodPort' is an 'e-business marketplace,' which businesses can register on, only via the Food Northwest website www.foodnw.co.uk. The system is available to all food and drink businesses in Cheshire, Cumbria, Greater Manchester, Lancashire and Merseyside. A consultation process revealed that the sector needs better information, easier networking with other businesses, joint procurement and for small businesses, easy to use ICT systems. Based on this, FoodPort has been developed as a research and development project that will run until December 2008 and will allow businesses to develop their e-business capabilities at low risk. FoodPort provides the opportunity for businesses to reduce the cost of commodities through joint buying with other companies. Its procurement service enables companies to compete by enhancing their buying power, for example on commodities such as packaging. An initial scoping exercise which took place in 2007, with 10 companies, has seen those involved realising savings of up to 10 per cent. The project provides three areas of support including affordable access to high quality, up-to-date information from Leatherhead Food International after an initial free three-month trial period; a free online business networking tool linking individuals within the Northwest food and drink community, and an affordable, managed computing service, offering access to Microsoft Office applications and the Internet without the need for in-house support. Pat Foreman, chief executive of Food Northwest, said: "Our aim is to help food businesses in the region to improve their productivity and to grow. FoodPort will help companies to make connections with other individuals and businesses within the industry, gain access to information to increase efficiency and profitability, and find new ways to do business through channels to new markets. Ultimately we want to make them more competitive in the rapidly developing market environments of the 21st century." To find out more about FoodPort people can dial 0151 795 0119, 0151 795 0107, or 0151 795 0106 or visit www.foodnw.co.uk