GE Capital has released a national survey of C-suite executives at middle market companies (ranging from $10 million to less than $1 billion in sales). The survey includes an analysis of the Food and Beverage industry.

KEY FINDINGS - The most significant insights to emerge from GE Capital’s survey of leaders of U.S. middle market firms include:

• The food and beverage sector continues to enjoy strong growth despite concerns about an increasing cost structure driven by increasing commodity prices.
• Revenue growth remains strong and the number of firms reporting year-over-year gains in employment is higher than it was in March of this year.
• The key consumer preferences driving product innovation in this sector are health and wellness, value and convenience.
• Many firms will look for operational efficiencies by increasing automation, reducing waste created during processing and adding more efficient equipment to replace older models.

Additional Findings Include:

• Nearly 60% of food and beverage firms expect their cost structure to increase in the next 12 months, and a similar proportion plan to increase the pricing of their products and services.
• More than half of food and beverage firms plan to improve operational efficiencies in the next 12 months, primarily by increasing automation, reducing waste created during processing and replacing old equipment with more efficient models

GE Capital surveyed 50 companies in the food and beverage industry to ascertain their views on the global and U.S. economies and their outlook on a variety of important economic, industry and business-level issues, including growth expectations and financing needs.

To download the survey, click here.