UK Business Succession Index

Food & Beverage Manufacturing: business succession in the UK

1,899 UK food & beverage manufacturing companies — 32.6% — have a director aged 60 or over.

0.1 points above the all-trades average of 32.5%.

Companies measured5,819
Director aged 60+1,899
Exposure rate32.6%
Companies House register·Measured base 3,475,770·Data as at 13 August 2026·Full methodology
5,819
Companies measured
1,899
With a director 60+
707
With a director 70+
32.6%
Exposure rate

Of the 1,899 with a director over 60, 157 score 50 or higher on business quality — an output of our own scoring model, not a Companies House figure. How we score it.

Food & Beverage Manufacturing by region

RegionCompanies60+Rate
East Midlands32012739.7%
South West50720139.6%
East of England50819738.8%
Scotland35112936.8%
North West48317235.6%
Yorkshire & The Humber41314334.6%
South East66321732.7%
West Midlands44313330%
London1,58534421.7%

Combinations with fewer than 250 measured companies are not listed separately. They are still counted in every total on this page.

Next step

This page counts director ages across the whole register. If you are looking to buy rather than to research, our Manufacturing pages go further: we score each company on business quality and exit timing, and shortlist the ones worth approaching.

See UK Manufacturing →

Part of the UK Business Succession Index.

Cite this page

These figures are free to quote and reproduce, including in commercial work, with attribution to ExitRadar and a link to this page.

ExitRadar, "Food & Beverage Manufacturing: business succession in the UK", UK Business Succession Index, 13 August 2026. https://www.exitradar.co.uk/succession/mfg-food/

Need a cut that is not published here — a different trade grouping, a finer geography, or the underlying distribution? Get in touch and we will usually provide it. Methodology.

Method. Figures cover the 3,475,770 active UK companies where Companies House records an age bracket for at least one serving director — 93.8% of the 3,706,712 companies on the active register. A company counts as succession-exposed when its oldest serving director is 60 or over — not the board average, which would hide a 70-year-old founder sitting alongside younger co-directors. The business-quality figure covers only the subset our model assesses — see the methodology for why that is far smaller than the number with filed accounts. Data as at 13 August 2026; updated quarterly, next update October 2026. Full methodology.