Loughry Food student on placement with Karro Cookstown
March 12, 2018
My name is Roisin Bradley and I am a BSc (Hons) Food Business Management student at CAFRE’s Loughry Campus. I am currently in the third year of my degree course and I am completing my Industrial Placement at Karro Food Group.
Karro Food Group is one of the UK’s leading meat processors with pork processing plants across the country. It is a leading producer of bacon, gammon, pork, ham and cooked meats. I am based at their site in Cookstown, Co Tyrone, which is one of Northern Ireland’s largest pork processors.
At Karro, I am gaining excellent experience working in the Product Development Team where I am involved in developing new products for the market place. During the second year of my course at Loughry, I studied a module called Food Product Design. In this module, I worked in a team with fellow students to develop a new food product to present to Moy Park. My team were set a brief to develop a healthy chicken snack. I really enjoyed this module and decided that I would like to get further involved in the area of New Product Development.
Being on work placement is a great way to experience the world of work in the food industry whilst gaining a Diploma in Professional Practice and enhancing my CV. I believe that work placement is an important part of my course as it has given me the opportunity to develop my technical knowledge and skills. I am also developing many important transferable skills including communication, teamwork, time management and problem solving. In my role at Karro, I am able to apply the knowledge and skills I learnt in the Food Product Design Module, and in many other modules I have already completed at Loughry. I feel that this module has prepared me well for working in a busy product development team. It is exciting to develop a new product and then see it on the supermarket shelves!
The knowledge and skills gained on placement will be invaluable when I finish my degree and I am looking for a graduate role in the food industry.
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