IDM ¦ Education
Skills requirements
in the
dairy industry
Results of a pan-European
project
26 November 2019 saw the presentation of the final results
of a very important analysis of the future requirements
for professional education in the European dairy
sector. Representatives of international dairy companies
and national education institutions gathered at
the Van Larenstein Hall University in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands,
to discuss the outcome of the EU Erasmus+ project „Mapping
Skills Needs and Supply in the Dairy Sector“. IDM International
Dairy Magazine took part in the event. Here’s our report.
The project started back in 2016 born out of the realisation
that freedom of movement of (dairy) workers in the EU must
be supported by a comparison of skills required in the industry.
Initiator of this project that finally was adopted and supported
on EU level was AEDIL (Association for European Dairy Industry
Learning). A 3-year process supplied a solid database for mapping
20 · February 2020 ¦ international-dairy.com
About 35 representatives of EU dairy companies and dairy
schools met in late November 2019 in Leeuwarden (NL)
to discuss the findings of the Erasmus+ project Mapping
Skills Needs and Supply in the Dairy Sector
skills needs for the dairy industry in 14 European countries
and identified the most important skill requirements today and
in the future, specific for the milk processing industry.
AEDIL Secretary General Torsten Sach admitted in Leeuwarden
that he didn’t expect so many results, but in the end interviews
with 117 dairy companies of different size, 56 schools
and 65 ex students provided the so far biggest database on
how dairy education is managed in Europe and what skills are
required by today’s and tomorrow’s dairy industry. The results of
the project will now be submitted to the EU Commission.
Statistician and dairy engineer Prof. Morten Arendt Rasmussen,
Copenhagen University, confirmed at the Leeuwarden
gathering that the database is really solid and provides a very
good insight into dairy skills required. It was the open concept
of the survey whereby respondents could freely formulate their
view that provided the best insights into skills demand and fulfillment
by existing education systems and institutions. AEDIL
was able to identify the following skills categories that are most
important to the dairy industry:
• Dairy skills
• Digital skills
• Green skills
• Management skills
• Recruitment appeared as one of the most pressing problems
(issued by 80% of the respondents) and received another key
priority in AEDIL’s findings.
Dairy skills
AEDIL Project Coordinator Isabel Sande Frandsen, Mejerifolk
(Denmark), described some of the most important findings from
the Erasmus+ project. Employees in the dairy industry must defi-
The results of the project were discussed in several workshops
(photo: IFM)