South West College and Moy Park to deliver exciting career pathway for young people

SOUTH West College celebrated NI Apprenticeship Week by show-casing its partnerships with local employers.

The college has recently colla-borated with Moy Park to co-design and deliver a hands on, industry relevant apprenticeship.

SWC has a track record in equipping participants with the skills employees need in order to flourish and grow, and this has been particularly true in the engineering sector.

The collaboration with Moy Park builds on the existing expertise of SWC within eng-ineering maintenance and the innovation being employed by the award-winning food company in its production methods.

Moy Park is one of the UK’s top food companies, Northern Ireland’s largest private sector business and one of Europe’s leading poultry producers.

The company provides hund-

reds of apprenticeship opport-unities across its business in engineering as well as technical and operations.

Chris Robinson, Centre for Ex-cellence Work Based Learning manager at SWC, said: “The collaboration between Moy Park and SWC is a prime example of how the further education and private sector can work together to co-design and deliver a bespoke course in response to industry demand.

“We are delighted to work closely with Moy Park, enabling SWC to contribute to NI business growth through high-quality sk-ills training. Apprenticeships pro-

vide a range of opportunities for people looking to develop careers in an important and growing sector, and presents an exciting pathway for people to join Northern Ireland’s food engineering workforce.

“We are seeing that many more ambitious young people are opt-ing for this route of education and training with many enjoying the hands-on style of learn-ing and gaining a qualification while they work in industry offering real career progression opportunities.”

Nicola Leitch, Early Careers Programme Lead, added: “As well as being fully-funded, allowing apprentices to ‘earn while they learn’, Moy Park’s apprenticeship programmes include extensive mentorship, classroom sessions, support and hands-on, practical learning experiences, all while benefiting from Moy Park’s additional workplace learning and reward schemes.

“While we are currently actively recruiting for experienced eng-

ineers, we balance this with continuous investment in grow-

ing talent through new app-rentices.

“We love seeing the enthusiasm our team members bring to the business and in return we pride ourselves on providing each employee with recognition and rewards every step of the way.”

As a main provider of vocational and technical education and training in Northern Ireland, South West College plays a central role in up-skilling and re-skilling the population through a broad range of programmes of study leading to qualifications.

Programmes of study include apprenticeships and training, higher level apprenticeships, fur-

ther education and higher ed-

ucation from entry to post-graduate level.