BUSINESSES need a more co-ordinated approach to help them innovate and grow, the boss of meat-free food business Quorn, will tell businesses at the Festival of Ideas next week.

Kevin Brennan, chief executive of Quorn, which is based in Stokesley, North Yorkshire, will speak at a session on Supporting Businesses And Growing The Economy, at the Economy Day taking place at the Ron Cooke Hub on Friday.

He told The Press that Government policies, in particular tax credits for research and development (R&D) and intellectual property under the Patent Box scheme, held great benefits for businesses, but were not targeted to small businesses.

Quorn is a true R&D project, said Mr Brennan, which was 20 years in the development to find a new sustainable protein amid concerns about food shortages in the 1960s.

R&D enabled Quorn to mass manufacture food from a plant protein through fermentation.

The business continues to invest in R&D projects – to make its fermentation and manufacturing processes more efficient, improve the flavour and texture of the product, eliminate eggs from the process and find alternative uses for its waste products, on which it is working with the University of York.

Mr Brennan, who previously worked for Kellogg’s, said large businesses had an army of people they could throw into understanding how policies worked to extract all the benefit from them.

“But companies a 20th of the size, of which there are hundreds in the north, don’t have the people they can throw at these problems.

“Because we come from an R&D background, we know how to extract the benefits out of these policies and they do make it more attractive for us.

“If our R&D can lead to something we believe we can get a patent around, we put a lot more effort into it because there could be significant tax efficiencies.”

But he said the Government had still not signed off credits from two years ago, which prevented business being confident they would see the benefits of investments.

“I strongly believe these types of policies are good for the economy, but my view is that they are not particularly well coordinated or driven by anybody in Government that truly understands business.”

He said a Mary Portas-style model, with someone who understands business to work with businesses, needed to be involved in policy making.