Food & Beverage Manufacturing succession in South East

Name: Food & Beverage Manufacturing business succession in South East
Creator: ExitRadar
License: https://www.exitradar.co.uk/terms

217 of 663 food & beverage manufacturing companies in South East — 32.7% — have a director aged 60 or over.

Companies measured663

Director aged 60+217

Exposure rate32.7%

Companies House register·Measured base 3,475,770·Data as at 13 August 2026·Full methodology

663

Companies measured

217

Director 60+

Director 70+

32.7%

Exposure rate

The UK average across all trades is 32.5%; food & beverage manufacturing nationally runs at 32.6%.

Measure	Companies
Food & Beverage Manufacturing companies in South East measured	663
Oldest director aged 60 or over	217
Oldest director aged 70 or over	78

Of the 217 with a director over 60, 18 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 in other regions

Region	60+	Rate
East Midlands	127	39.7%
South West	201	39.6%
East of England	197	38.8%
Scotland	129	36.8%
North West	172	35.6%
Yorkshire & The Humber	143	34.6%
West Midlands	133	30%
London	344	21.7%

Other trades in South East

Trade	60+	Rate
Consultancy Services	14,455	41.6%
Lettings	9,873	42.9%
Retail	6,015	26.7%
IT Services / Consultancy	5,392	25.7%
Investment	5,385	33.7%
Other Leisure	5,364	33.2%
Investment / Fund Management	4,380	40.3%
Property Development	4,170	46.3%

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 →

See all Food & Beverage Manufacturing succession data or everything in South East.

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 succession in South East", UK Business Succession Index, 13 August 2026. https://www.exitradar.co.uk/succession/mfg-food/south-east/

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.