Press Statement

Preasráiteas

27 April 2021

Go to release: Food and Agriculture: A Value Chain Analysis

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today (27 April 2021) published Food and Agriculture: A Value Chain Analysis 2018.

This publication is categorised as a CSO Frontier Series Output. Particular care must be taken when interpreting the statistics in this release. CSO Frontier Series may use new methods which are under development and/or data sources which may be incomplete, for example new administrative data sources. Publishing outputs under the Frontier Series allows the CSO to provide useful new information to users and get informed feedback on these new methods and outputs whilst at the same time making sure that the limitations are well explained and understood.

This publication illustrates the globalised nature of the value chain for agriculture, food and drink in Ireland. This globalisation is apparent in both inflows and outflows. Ireland has large imports of food and drink, and large investment here by foreign-owned food and drink producers, but also notable inflows of income from exports and dividends from foreign subsidiaries of Irish-owned multinational enterprises (MNEs). The food and drink value chain is correspondingly highly exposed to outflows - it relies on markets in other countries for exported goods, and households consume large volumes of imports.

For example, household consumption of food and drink was valued at €10.5 billion in 2018, of which approximately 51% was imported. This expenditure by households included €1.2 billion in product taxes (less subsidies) and €2.8 billion in wholesalers’ and retailers’ margins. Ultimately households, as employees or farmers, and also as consumers, are affected by the agriculture and food value chain.

The output of agricultural produce was €8.7bn in 2018, the majority of which were cattle and milk. The biggest purchasers of this output were Irish-owned food and drink manufacturers, with smaller proportions of farm produce also sold directly to households or exported. These food producers then export the majority of their output, selling to 159 countries around the world. While the market for Irish food and drink is global, a high proportion of these goods (44%) is sold to the UK.

Commenting on the results Michael Connolly, Senior Statistician, said: “The initial impact of Brexit on this value chain is very evident in the analysis presented today. The importance of the Great British market as a destination for exports of food and drink companies and as a source of food and drink imports for the Irish retail sector is clear.

Although the Irish food and drink value chain is highly globalised, there is still a major concentration of activity with Great Britain, accounting for 23% of exports of these products in Jan–Feb 2021, down from a concentration of 33% in Jan-Feb 2018. Imports from Great Britain account for 18% of food and drink total imports in the same two-month period in 2021, down from 41% in 2018.

As more data becomes available later in the year, it will become clearer as to whether this is an initial Brexit shock, or if the Irish food and drink value chain is truly moving away from its dependence on Great Britain.”

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