Food, Beverage & Tobacco Wholesale succession in South East

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

551 of 1,408 food, beverage & tobacco wholesale companies in South East — 39.1% — have a director aged 60 or over.

Companies measured1,408

Director aged 60+551

Exposure rate39.1%

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

1,408

Companies measured

551

Director 60+

179

Director 70+

39.1%

Exposure rate

The UK average across all trades is 32.5%; food, beverage & tobacco wholesale nationally runs at 31.3%.

Measure	Companies
Food, Beverage & Tobacco Wholesale companies in South East measured	1,408
Oldest director aged 60 or over	551
Oldest director aged 70 or over	179

Of the 551 with a director over 60, 39 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 & Tobacco Wholesale in other regions

Region	60+	Rate
South West	346	43.7%
Wales	153	42%
East of England	408	40.3%
Northern Ireland	115	38%
Scotland	313	37.9%
North East	83	33.2%
North West	437	32.5%
Yorkshire & The Humber	257	32.4%

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 Wholesale & Distribution pages go further: we score each company on business quality and exit timing, and shortlist the ones worth approaching.

See UK Wholesale & Distribution →

See all Food, Beverage & Tobacco Wholesale 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 & Tobacco Wholesale succession in South East", UK Business Succession Index, 13 August 2026. https://www.exitradar.co.uk/succession/wholesale-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.