Industry overview
The Manufacture of beverages sector across EU27 average comprises approximately 31,000 enterprises employing about 400,000 people and generating €140.0 bn in net turnover in 2020. The average enterprise size is – employees per firm. This is a useful yardstick when assessing whether your own operation sits within the typical scale band of the sector.
Profitability
With a thin operating margin of 2.4% of revenue in 2020, the sector reports €3.3 bn of gross operating surplus (Eurostat's EBITDA-equivalent, before depreciation). This figure provides the headline benchmark against which an individual operator can sanity-check their own bottom line, values significantly below indicate cost or pricing pressure, those above suggest competitive advantage worth defending.
Cost structure
Cost of revenue dominates the Manufacture of beverages P&L at 71.4% of turnover, reflecting the high material and input content of activities in this sector. Personnel costs account for 12.9%, with energy purchases adding –. Procurement efficiency and contract management are therefore the two strongest profit levers for operators in this segment.
Trend & trajectory
Over the period 2011 to 2020 the operating margin moved from 13.3% to 2.4% (-11.0 percentage points), a deteriorating trajectory that warrants attention. Sectors with stable or improving margins tend to reflect successful pass-through of input costs and disciplined capacity management; declining margins typically point to either over-supply or a structural cost squeeze that warrants strategic review.