Food Engineering – MEng

At a glance

Study a course that opens up exciting career opportunities in the food and drink industry. This course has been developed in collaboration with some of the UK's biggest food and drink manufacturing companies and best loved brands. You gain practical experience through paid industry placements and develop specialist expertise in food engineering, food manufacture efficiency and sustainability.

Key points• Achieve a higher qualification by graduating with a master's degree.
• Work towards chartered engineer (CEng) status.
• Gain experience working with leading UK food and drink companies on competitively paid industrial placements.
• Develop the technical skills in mechanical, electrical, civil and chemical engineering to gain a graduate role.

What is food engineering?
Food engineering blends engineering disciplines with a strong understanding of food and food science. It develops solutions to food design, manufacture and supply challenges whilst overcoming the unique issues that underpin safe food production. Food engineering covers a number of areas including • mechanical engineering • process control and efficiency • automation and manufacturing systems • food science and food safety • energy efficiency.

Food engineers help to deliver innovative and high quality products to customers throughout the world. They apply the mechanical engineering study of structures, systems performance, and how fluids behave, to safely and efficiently produce food and drink. Food engineers can specialise in design, development, research, maintenance and operations such as processing, packaging, storage and transportation.

The food and drink industry is exciting, fast moving and economically strong. It is the UK's largest manufacturing sector, with an annual turnover of nearly £80 billion. It employs around 400,000 people across more than 7,000 businesses and creates 8,500 new products every year.

This course

This course prepares you for a career in the food and drink industry. By replicating real life scenarios, you learn to create new systems and processes to deliver safe, competitive and innovative food and drink products.

We introduce you to engineering principles and how these are applied to food and drink manufacture. You design, implement and analyse sophisticated engineering process and control systems for manufacturing food in the most energy efficient, environmental and economical way.

You gain experience designing experiments and testing food engineering techniques and systems in our specialist engineering and food laboratories. By applying technical knowledge to practical challenges faced by industry, you build the skills and knowledge to develop innovative solutions to problems. You also learn how these techniques can improve product quality and reduce the impact on the environment, while maintaining industrial competitiveness.

Other areas you study include the cost effectiveness, financial justification and efficiency of processes. Finally you develop knowledge and understanding of management and leadership.

You are taught by experts with extensive industry experience including research and consultancy in food, engineering and manufacturing. We have strong links with leading companies who provide real world examples to learn from. These companies, along with other major food and drink manufacturers, helped design the course to ensure it gives you the skills and knowledge needed for a successful career in the food and drink industry. Industry professionals also deliver guest lectures to provide you with the latest guidance, expertise and industry knowledge.

Your studies are supported by integrated, competitively paid industrial placements. These placements ensure you gain extensive workplace experience, developing your ability and employability. They are provided by the food and drink industry for all students on the course.

As well as the paid work placements embedded in the course, you attend industry field trips to a range of companies to develop your technical and professional knowledge of equipment and processes.

Key areas of study
You gain expertise in • food composition and safety • mechanical engineering • thermodynamics and thermo fluids • mechanical systems • food processing and process control • automation • lean manufacturing • process improvement • business, finance and management.