There’s no doubt that 2023 was an interesting year for food and beverage manufacturers. There were companies that had a good year in terms of sales, which is how this list is determined, but generally speaking, sales were down compared to 2022. One might assume that a dip in sales would mean a respective dip in growth or revenue, but many companies were touting the opposite. What were the reasons that sales were down? How were companies able to turn a profit despite the downturn? What areas of the globe saw better success? Let’s take a look.
If there was a single word that could be used to describe the economic climate and what was driving business decisions this past year, it’d be inflation. Shocker, right? Material and ingredient costs were up everywhere, which cut into overall revenues. What was driving inflation also shouldn’t be much of a surprise—the continued war in Ukraine was cited by multiple companies, as were weather conditions that affected production.