by Sarah Hills FoodBizDaily.com London
November 03 2009 - Sales in Northern Ireland’s food and drinks processing sector have grown steadily over three years to approach the £3bn mark in 2008, an official report reveals.
The value of sales for the sector increased from £2,595 million in 2006 to £2,799 million in 2007, while provisional estimates suggest that total sales increased to £2,975 million in 2008.
The Department of Agriculture and Rural Development’s annual report is called ‘Size and Performance of the Northern Ireland Food and Drinks Processing Sector’.
It offers a “robust statistical evidence base” for those in the food and drinks processing sector seeking to identify industry trends, to develop business strategies or to benchmark business performance against the report’s range of indicators.
The report provides information on values of sales, exports, value added and number of employees for each of 10 sub-sectors of the food and drinks processing sector in 2006 and 2007.
The sub-sectors are animal by-products, bakeries, beef and sheep meat, drinks, eggs, fish, fruit and vegetables, milk and milk products, pig meat and poultry meat.
The milk and milk products sub-sector along with the beef and sheep meat continued to be the two largest contributors to total gross turnover, together accounting for 49% of the total value of gross turnover in 2007.
All of the food and drinks sub-sectors traded profitably in 2007 except the poultry meat sub-sector, which failed to generate a profit. However, poultry did see increases in gross turnover between the years 2006 and 2007.
The figures show that in 2007, the food and drinks processing sector contributed approximately 1.9% of N. Ireland’s total gross value added. It accounted for 19.3% of total manufacturing sales, 16.6% of manufacturing external sales and 22.2% of manufacturing employment in 2007.
From 1989 to 2003, N. Ireland was continuously recorded as the most important market for the sector. However, in 2004, the British market became more important and this trend continued in 2006 and 2007 with Britain accounting for 40% of sales in both years.
The time-lag between 31 December 2008 and firms’ submission of their annual accounts to Companies Registry meant that full accounts information were not available when thr report was being prepared.