A recent survey of 70 senior agri-food executives conducted by English Farming and Food Partnerships (EFFP) has indicated that more than 70 per cent plan to invest significant sums in their businesses over the next two years.
Some 90 per cent of the respondents were increasingly confident about the future of their businesses and with 21 per cent plan to invest between £5 million to upward of £50m, 47 per cent plan to invest sums of between £500,000 and £5m and 30 per cent plan to invest up to £0.5m.
Those surveyed included large businesses known for leading consumer brands, major suppliers to multiple supermarkets, small niche processors/manufacturers and several major farmer controlled businesses.
EFFP’s chief executive Siôn Roberts said: “The survey shouts out confidence in the agri-food sector despite the recession, and what’s really interesting about the results is that 83 per cent are confident that they can raise or already have the capital they need to invest from cash reserves or third-party sources.”
The most important driver for investment was cited as confidence in market demand for the company’s products or services, and the areas targeted for investment indicate an overriding focus on investment into new facilities for business expansion as well as capital for acquisitions or replacing assets and equipment where needed, or for compliance reasons.
“The economy is recovering and as it recovers one of the sectors that is going to play an increasingly important role is manufacturing,” Roberts added. “Already through the recession food manufacturing has proved one of the most resilient areas of manufacturing and one that is well positioned to remain so; these survey findings reflect the associated sector confidence.”
“To put the sector into perspective, food processing and manufacture is very significant to the country’s GDP, it constitutes the country’s largest manufacturing sector, generating a turnover of some £74 billion and a gross value added of £22.7bn amounting to 14 per cent of the UK’s manufacturing’s GVA and it exports some £13.2bn of products.”
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