Food manufacturing / Processing

According to The Food and Drink Federation the food industry is the biggest manufacturing sector in the country, with a turnover in 2020 of over £112bn.  The industry employs approximately 468,000 people across the entire UK. Making it a key part in the food and drink supply chain that employed 4.2m people.  Interestingly in this same report it showed over 97% of the 11,675 food and drink manufacturing businesses are SMEs.  According to gov.uk approximately £120bn was spent on food and non-alcoholic drink shopping in 2021, with a further £60bn spend on alcoholic drinks and just under £60bn on catering.

Across the UK and Internationally there are many different types of food manufacturers or food processors, they range from slaughterhouses, grain mills, bakeries, confectionary, fruit and vegetable processing, dairies, soft drinks etc.  Within each one of these businesses, they have many different functions from purchasing, technical, engineering, production, commercial etc. All these departments work together to create a profitable product to sell to either other businesses, foodservice or the retail markets. Each industry will have their own specialist equipment that will allow them to make their product how they want to, one of the key abilities to a successful business is being able to produce the same quality of product a smaller business can make but on a mass scale. Making the product in large quantities drives down the individual price allowing the company to use economies of scale to create a bigger profit margin.