The State of Food & Beverage 2001 Spending

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The following is an advisory by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources Inc.; Houston, Texas). As the Food & Beverage Industry continues restructuring to find growth, mergers, acquisitions and consolidation are shrinking the industry. In recent years, food processors have shown ravenous appetites for acquiring smaller companies that can help increase their market share and improve efficiencies. Five of the biggest industry players control about 50% of sales in the United States.

Since improved efficiency is one of the typical reasons for mergers and consolidations, often the result is the closure of less-efficient plants. Once that process begins, there are many related decisions that need to be made that quite often can lead to decisions regarding the consolidation of other facilities in a company and sometimes replacing an aging facility with new construction.

Since the beginning of the year, Industrialinfo.com has been tracking activities in mergers and acquisitions and also plant closings. 141 plants in the US and Canada have closed their doors and over 85 major mergers/acquisitions have been made with more in the works or pending for the year 2001.

Excess production capacity has become a problem in some parts of the food industry, such as grain processing and meat production. The primary reason industry experts say is a decline in foreign demand, partly due to increasing production by processors in South America and Asia, particularly China.

Companies seeking to construct new facilities are also facing more stringent state and local regulations regarding air emissions and water pollution. Given the increasing capital investment, food processors are more likely to expand, when possible, rather than build new plants.

IIR's capital spending and MRO projections for 2001 are at $13.8 billion. In the top 45 publicly held companies, spending projections are estimated at $11 billion, up 1.1% over 2000 projections. Over two thirds of capital spending is happening within existing facilities with money being spent mainly on production, packaging and process control equipment. Improvements in automation and information integration are the major trend impacting capital spending over the next five years.