In 1998, a £3.8 million, 4,000 square metre hi-tech food technology centre was opened, featuring the latest design and materials for producing food to EU standards. The food technology centre incorporates four mini food processing areas; meat, bakery, fruit & vegetable and dairy sectors and is designed to accommodate best practice in food manufacture.

This unique facility is equipped with an extensive range of modern pilot and industrial scale food processing and product development facilities to ensure Loughry students can develop the competences and skills needed by the food industry.

Through our purpose-built food technology centre students develop competences to enable them to:

• Formulate new products as technology develops
• Respond to changing consumer demands for nutritionally adapted foods through new product development and consumer analysis facilities
• Implement and integrate process control and process optimisation to the production of food
• Develop and analyse quality systems and diagnostic tests for products
• Analyse and develop packaging and labelling for foods
• Develop management competences in a production environment