Sectoral Innovation Watch Food and Drinks Sector. Final Sector Report

The food and drinks manufacturing industry is a diverse and complex sector. There are ample possibilities for performance improvement and innovation in the food and drinks industry as well as a variety of challenges ranging from a lack of financial and human resources, fragmented consumer interests and concerns to the implementation of various, and new, regulations related to health, the environment, labour conditions, etc. The sector is caught between novelty and tradition. In contrast to all other products, foods and drinks are ingested, healthy or unhealthy, from infants to old age, which calls for rather unique requirements for safety and health. But also other dimensions like taste, consistency, olfactory properties play a role along with ethical, religious and psychosocial aspects. The food and drinks manufacturing industry has strong links with down- and upstream sectors like agriculture, life sciences, packaging, logistics and retail, which also from an innovation perspective do play an important role. Although food and drinks are essential for human life and have a large influence on human health and wellbeing, the industrial sector of food and drinks manufacturing is generally defined as mid-to-low tech in the literature (e.g. Hirsch-Kreinsen, 2006; Kirner et al., 2009), an observation that is also backed by the CIS4 data analysis conducted in the frame of this project