Without a minister in place, there are no plans in DAERA to launch a capital grant scheme for food processing companies investing in new buildings and equipment.

A potential new food processing grant scheme was included in the current Rural Development Programme for 2014 to 2020. It was allocated a provisional budget of around £30m, and was to be introduced in 2017, providing support of up to 40%.

The new scheme was to be a replacement for the Processing and Marketing Grant (PMG) which ran under previous rural development programmes. The last PMG offered grants of up to 40% to a maximum support per project of £0.5m. It was targeted at small- and medium-sized companies (up to 750 employees).

With larger companies excluded the last time around, a number of industry bodies had lobbied DAERA for the scope of a new scheme to be widened.

On enquiry, a DAERA spokesperson said that the final scope and nature of a new scheme will be subject to the views and approval of a DAERA minister.

“Therefore, at this point in time it is not possible to be specific about the timing or nature of the scheme, or the types and level of investment that might be available to the processing sector. Currently, there are no plans to launch this scheme in the absence of an incoming DAERA minister,” the spokesperson confirmed.