Assessing the competitiveness situation of EU food and drink manufacturing industries: An index-based approach

The competitiveness of the food and drink (F&D) manufacturing sector in 13 countries is analyzed empirically, using 1995-2002 Eurostat data. After a review of earlier agribusiness competitiveness studies, an Industrial Competitiveness Index is proposed as a composite measure for multidimensional economic performance, covering profitability, productivity and output growth. The index approach enables relative competitiveness comparisons across industries, countries and over time. In addition, cluster analysis is used for identifying distinct groups of industries characterized by similar performance patterns. The results suggest that the beverage manufacturing industry was the most competitive EU F&D industry, while the United Kingdom was the country with the highest performance averaged across all F&D manufacturing activities. As compared to the average of the period 1995-1998, overall competitiveness in real terms slightly increased. At the same time, overall competitiveness seems also to have converged slightly across countries, implying that the performance of EU countries in F&D manufacturing has become more similar. As for the clustering results, it appears that competitiveness is in general fairly equally distributed across the different industries and that above- or below-average performance is usually not sustained for long. [EconLit citations: F230, L660, Q 130] (c) 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.