United Kingdom: Food Processing Ingredients

Food and drink production is the UK’s largest manufacturing sector. Despite COVID-19 and Brexit, the UK consumer still demands products containing ingredients that cannot be sourced entirely in the UK. The UK relies on imports in order to fulfill the demand for such ingredients. Health and wellbeing are key trends driving the market as the demand for plant-based and ‘clean eating’ products increase. Many opportunities therefore exist in all sectors of the ingredients market. UK industry standards tend to focus on strict animal welfare, high technical specifications, traceability, and very competitive pricing. Data for 2019 (latest available) shows the manufacture of food products in the UK decreased by $1.2 billion from the previous year to $100.3 billion. The decline was attributed to falling sales of cakes and pastries as well as prepared meals, as a result of consumers being more health conscious. Post anticipates sales of these products to recover and grow in 2021 and onwards.