Foods

A KNOWLEDGE POWERHOUSE FOR FOODS > Aarhus is an expert city within foods development and -production, and also, along with the rest of the Central Denmark area, accounts for 60 percent of Denmark’s food exports. The city offers foods businesses an easy access to highly educated labour from the city’s many specialised educations, at the same time, a significant share of the Danish research- and development institutions within foods are placed in East Jutland.

International leader

Aarhus holds a significant role on the international foods market, and several large foods businesses have thus chosen to place their operations in the city. Arla Foods, the second largest dairy group in Europe, has its headquarter in Aarhus. The city also houses Aarhus Karlshamn, the world’s leading producer of speciality fats for chocolate. Furthermore, Danisco – the third largest foods business in measures of investments in research and development – has an R&D department in the city, and Europe’s largest meat processing company, Danish Crown, is also placed in the Aarhus area.

Research competences

As a foods business in the Aarhus area there are excellent opportunities for utilising the strong research competences that are present within foods in Aarhus. The research environment practises widespread collaborations, and research is on a high international level in a long range of areas:

· The Faculty of Agricultural Sciences at the University of Aarhus contributes with 400 scientific employees distributed in seven departments

· Within technology, the NanoFOOD-consortium within the iNano-centre, is a significant matchmaking organisation focusing on the development of foods and foods technology

· When it comes to marketing, sales, distribution and product development the Aarhus School of Business is of particular relevance

Networks

The research- and development cooperation in Aarhus is formalised through a long range of strong networks, which businesses can get involved with in relation to development and production. Furthermore, courses, seminars and activities relevant to the foods industry are regularly arranged.

Education

Within the area of foods the educational environment in Aarhus is rapidly developing. A lot of new educations are seeing the light of day, and the general educational level is very high. Preliminary one bachelor programme and four master’s programmes within the area of foods have been established at the University of Aarhus, furthermore, at the Engineering College of Aarhus a diploma programme in agricultural technology is currently in the making.

In the coming years, these initiatives will be supported by the city’s new foods hub, Agro Food Park in Skejby, which is a broad foods cluster modelled by IT-byen Katrinebjerg.