Belgium-Netherlands-Luxembourg: Food Processing Ingredients Sector Annual 2005

Report Highlights:
Benelux food processing industry, which has a yearly turnover of about $100 billion, is situated around the ports of Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Antwerp and serves the entire EU.

Market Developments
The Netherlands derives two-thirds of its GDP from merchandise trade and had a positive balance of trade in 2003 of over 30 Billion dollars. The food-processing sector in the Benelux, like the Dutch economy, is heavily oriented toward import, transformation and export. While the Belgian-Dutch border separates many food processors, in point of fact major food processors are clustered in a corridor formed by the port cities of Antwerp, Rotterdam and Amsterdam.

These processors serve not only the Benelux market, which would be too small to sustain them, but the entire European market.This international focus gives rise to and sustains a number of features that are unique to the Benelux food processing sector:

• Turnover of the Benelux processing industry has been stable at €83,500 for the past four years.The value of imported inputs has gone up but the value of exports has grown even faster, resulting in a trade surplus estimated at €26 billion in 2004.

• GDP and population are growing slowly in Western Europe, so new marketing opportunities are found in South, Central and Eastern Europe.Although the changing composition of the domestic population may lead to demand for different food products.
  
• Knowledgeable traders, Europe’s leading ports (Rotterdam, Antwerp and Amsterdam), a good distribution system, a competitive processing industry and efficient marketing systems, make the Benelux an attractive market for trading and processing agricultural products.
  
• Food manufacturing, handling and import regulations are almost completely harmonized within the EU, making regional trade fairly easy.Trade barriers, import regulations, import and transportation costs and time constraints all complicate imports from non-EU countries.
  
• In 2004, consumers in the Benelux spent more than €53 billion on food, the equivalent of 15% of total spending.Population in the Benelux totals 27 million people; with more than two-thirds living in a 100 mile corridor stretching from Amsterdam to Brussels.There are some 11.4 million households with an average size of 2.3 people.The trend is toward smaller household size and the population is aging (over 14 percent of the population is 65 years or older).