Schools Industry Challenge

At first glance, asking a group of pupils to create their own healthy muffins, pizzas or soups seems a strange way of showing them that a career in the food industry can be an attractive proposition. However, that's exactly what we do at Macphie and with great results!

The Macphie School’s Industry Challenge aims to develop productive links with local schools to demonstrate the diversity of challenging and rewarding careers that can be found within Macphie and the wider food industry. Since our first Challenge in 2001, over 2,000 local Secondary and primary school pupils have risen to the Macphie Challenge. Due to its huge success it is now a regular event on the local academic calendar.

Macphie has the facilities to accommodate between 120-150 pupils and teachers at our Glenbervie head-quarters. During the Challenge, pupils get an insight into running their own businesses. They are asked to form their own companies and choose packaging, marketing, production and manufacturing teams and a Chief Executive from amongst their peers. We give them a new product development brief and they face four mini challenges: Decide on the product values; Manufacture the product; Design the packaging and Plan the marketing campaign. Their hard work is then displayed at a trade fair and the pupils perform a radio jingle to promote their product. The results are then judged by a panel including Macphie staff and teachers.

One of the event organisers is Sylvia Halkerston, HR Director at Macphie, she says: “The aim of the Challenges is to raise awareness of careers in the food industry and gain insider understanding of how a dynamic business works. The Challenges makes direct links to the curriculum so that pupils can see where subjects taught can be applied to a real job in the food industry. In addition to supporting the curriculum, the Challenges builds a variety of skills - ICT, Maths, Language, Social - and confidence, as well as experience of working as a team to make decisions, which often involves improving their communication skills and developing a willingness to take responsibility and initiative.”

The first Primary Schoool Chalenge involved Auchenblae Primary School and ran over the course of two months. It was a great success combining visits to the school and visits to Macphie's manufacturing head-quarters. Teacher, Dorothy Duncan, summed up the experience: "It was a very exciting and interesting enterprise. The children learned a great deal, developed sound understanding of what it takes to run a business and they really enjoyed the whole experience. There was a real buzz in the classroom and the class didn’t seem to realise they were doing “real work” because they become so engrossed in making their company - “MacDuncan’s Cookies” - a success! It was very important that the children had ownership of their company and they were all included in the decision making. The staff of Macphie were very supportive throughout and there couldn’t have been a better company to work with.”

We are proud to support and be involved with schools, colleges and universities both locally and nationally. If your school would like to discuss the opportunity of working in partnership with Macphie, please contact our Human Resources team.