Editor's Plate: Looks Like a Happy New Year Looms

Despite some Thanksgiving-time drama for the business world and the country at large, there are plenty of signs the overall future is bright, and the food and beverage industry is entering the new year with a full head of steam.

It seems like all we’ve been writing about for the past few months have been problems: a hopelessly backlogged supply chain, recent-record inflation and input cost increases, labor unrest. I dreaded the arrival of companies’ third-quarter financial reports.

Against that backdrop, during the month of November, one big food company after another published their third-quarter numbers, and all of them were stellar. Before I get to some individual reports, let me cite the Consumer Brands Association’s third-quarter Economic Pulse:

“Demand for consumer packaged goods (CPG) products in the third quarter of 2021 was 8.3% more than the same period the year before and 1.8% more than the prior quarter. Demand for CPG products showed year-over-year growth every month since the start of the pandemic with one exception: March 2021 (which showed only a slight decline of 1.4%).”

And if you think they’re using “demand” synonymously with “price,” the association continued: “While consumer prices for CPG products have risen 3.2% over last year, it does not approach explaining the level of demand we are experiencing.”

Demand, demand, demand. The word appears three times in the above two paragraphs from Consumer Brands. Keeping up with demand has been difficult with the hurdles that have appeared in the past two years, but it’s a far better situation than supply outpacing demand.

To read this entire article from Food Processing click here.