Germany still attractive for producers

Overall, Germany remains an attractive location for companies in the agricultural and food industries. This is one of the central results of a study by the Justus Liebig University in Gießen (Institute for Business Administration in Agricultural and Food Economics) commissioned by the Heinz Lohmann Foundation. In the period from June to October 2017, the institute collected 234 expert opinions from the four sectors in three rounds of surveys bakery, beer, dairy and poultry industry. In the third round of the survey, the experts commented on the results of a population-representative online survey of 2.009 consumers.

"Despite high competitive and price pressure due to the concentration in retail and strong regulatory tendencies, the industry experts tend to paint a positive to satisfactory picture of Germany as a location," summarizes Prof. Dr. Rainer Kühl summarized a partial result. 86 percent of the experts in the beer industry and 64 percent in baked goods rate Germany's location quality as very good or good. Representatives of the dairy industry and the poultry industry, on the other hand, rate Germany as a location only 67 and 75 percent respectively as satisfactory or sufficient. Germany as a location receives predominantly (very) good ratings from the experts surveyed for the image of German products abroad, the infrastructure, the functionality of food monitoring and the pioneering role in relation to animal and environmental protection laws. With regard to the availability of trainees and skilled workers, the interviewees critically assess the location. When it comes to the question and assessment of the long-term competitiveness of Germany as a business location, however, there is a heterogeneous picture of opinion. While it is still predominantly rated as good in the baked goods and beer sectors, it ranks as “satisfactory” in the dairy and food industries. The poorest assessment of the poultry industry is the long-term competitiveness of Germany as a business location. Here, almost 40 percent only rate the competitiveness as “inadequate/inadequate”.

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