The South Lincolnshire food cluster, centred on Boston and Spalding, is the UK’s most concentrated agri-food chain cluster with 28,000 employees and the UK’s leading food logistics cluster.

The cluster is skilled, ambitious and investing to develop the UK’s first ‘Greenport’, combining food production and processing with an international transport hub.

Boston hosts Plant and Bean, Europe’s largest plant protein manufacturing facility opened in March 2021.  Boston also has major food plants run by Greenyard, Greencore, Bakkavor and growing food trading chain companies, such as Davis Worldwide and Ripe Now.

South Holland has a commercial food sector which employs 42% of the local workforce, 10 times as concentrated as nationally.  From 2010-’17 South Holland grew its food chain GVA at more than double the national rate.  South Lincolnshire is the centre of UK food logistics, with an estimated 30% of all national food freight distributed through the district, centred on Spalding with: Fowler Welch; Freshlinc; GIST; XPO; Bakkavor, and in Boston, Turners distribution centre at Bicker, all focused on this sector.