Robotics firm 'betrayed' as regional agency cuts funds

Doncaster-based Centre for Food Robotics and Automation (CenFRA), which provides project support to companies across the UK, warned it could be forced to close as soon as October without guaranteed funding from the regional development agency (RDA).

The company is currently three years through a five-year project which would see it achieve an operating profit by the end of 2012 and be financially self-sufficient thereafter.

It is understood that it has received 1.76m of a possible 2.8m budget but Yorkshire Forward said it cannot afford to extend the contract for another two years. The RDA is believed to have offered the organisation 200,000 to operate until March next year.

In a briefing paper issued to MPs, CenFRA said: "It (CenFRA) has a clear and credible plan for growth and commercial sustainability. To let it fail now would be a tragedy, a waste and a betrayal of the nation's ambitions for its food and drink industry."

Steve Blazye, managing director of CenFRA, told MPs at a private meeting in Westminster: "We feel that we are pretty unique in the Yorkshire Forward scheme of things because we are one the projects that will eventually return a profit and put money back into the economy.

He added: "If CenFRA is forced to close, nearly 2m of taxpayers money will have been written off, which I believe represents extremely poor value for money."

The organisation, which employs six staff, has a client base of more than 200 companies and has supported businesses including Bettys, Arla Foods and Morrisons.

Many Yorkshire MPs are now writing to Thea Stein, chief executive of Yorkshire Forward, Business Secretary Vince Cable and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, to demand answers.

Craig Whitaker, Conservative MP for Calder Valley, said: "Robotics will help the UK become much more competitive but at the moment it is well behind countries like France, Spain and Germany. It is incredibly disappointing that 1m is being cut from this project."

A Yorkshire Forward spokeswoman said: "The CenFRA contract is a standard three-year Yorkshire Forward contract, which comes to an end at the end of November this year.

"In the past Yorkshire Forward has had the facility to extend three year contracts up to a maximum of two additional years but due to financial constraints put on the RDAs' budgets we are no longer able to do this."