2025 Manufacturing Outlook Survey: Cost Control Catches Up With Food Safety
We've included five infographics in this report. To see all 15 questions asked in our 24th annual Manufacturing Outlook Survey click here.
For the first time in the 24 years of our Manufacturing Outlook Survey, food safety is not the runaway top priority for the new year among manufacturing professionals; cost control was neck and neck with it. And optimism, although still the feeling of the majority, is at a four-year low.
In a sign of the times, cost control’s 8.11 weighted score beat out food safety’s 7.67 score, when the 100 respondents to our survey were asked “Please rank … the importance to your plant of each of the following manufacturing issues.”
To be fair, food safety was still ranked the No. 1 priority by the highest number of respondents (26%), but higher second- and third-place rankings for cost control (22% ranked it first) pushed it ahead in the weighted score. 23% ranked automation first, for a weighted score of 6.64 and third place among priorities.
The increased number of pessimistic responses to our annual survey pulled the 2025 sentiment toward the middle ground. To be clear, more than half of respondents each year since the pandemic have had a rosy outlook, and 2025 is no different. But the 58% optimism rating was the lowest since our 2021 survey, at the height of the Covid pandemic. This year, 12% expressed pessimism: 7% felt a little pessimistic (vs. 5% last year) and 5% were very pessimistic (vs. 1% last year). That's also up from the pessimistic group in 2023 (when 9% felt down about the coming year) and is the highest since 2021, when 12.9% of respondents fell into those two categories.
Maybe this added gloom emanates from planned cuts to production at processing facilities. When asked how their plant’s production will change in 2025, 11% of respondents said their facility would see a decrease of some sort, with 8% expecting a drop of 2-9%, and 3% forecasting a cut of 10-19%. That’s a jump from 3% expecting any sort of decrease in 2024 and 6% in 2023.
Significant increases to plant production (increasing by 10% or more) appears on a longer-term slide, with only 28% expecting more this year, compared to 33% last year and 48% the year prior.
When widening the lens to include their entire company, respondents conveyed what might be a reshuffling in terms of production capacity, which anecdotally makes sense for anyone reading the headlines and seeing older plants being closed while new plants continue to be built. It also swings significantly from the 2024 expectations.
This year, 47% of respondents said production would likely stay the same company-wide in 2025, compared to 30% last year. Meanwhile, 30% believe their businesses will open plants or add new lines in 2025, which is slightly less than 2024 sentiment (36%). However, when it comes to consolidation through merging or closing lines or plants, 16% of those who took the survey this year believe their companies will proceed down this path, versus only 3% last year.
What a bummer, indeed.
Sustainability, energy efficiency less urgent
Coming back to the top manufacturing issues, capacity expansion and worker recruitment rounded out the top five in terms of importance in 2025, and 2024 certainly woke people up to inflation/price increases as a concern — it ranked sixth this year after finishing in last place in 2024. On the flip side, sustainability plummeted from fourth place last year to eighth place, and energy efficiency fell to last place this year after sitting in seventh in 2024.
We gave respondents the chance to comment on other vital manufacturing issues that weren’t among the 10 listed in the survey. More than 10% mentioned the new presidential administration and its tariffs, taxes and potential regulatory changes as an issue they’d be watching closely. Another 5% or so mentioned labor recruitment, training or retention as an ongoing issue, while a small handful said transportation and the supply chain could pose challenges.
One respondent mentioned “equipment reliability” as a concern, stating that “parts are increasingly hard to get.”
Back to food safety issues, we asked who thought their facility was prepared for the FSMA 204 food traceability rule, which will be enforced next January. Most respondents (62%) answered in the affirmative. We opened the door for comments and got a wide variety of answers from “Never heard of it until this question” to proclamations that they will be ready or still working on the paperwork and training to comply.
One respondent said, “We are implementing new processes and investing in the required capital equipment in order to comply with the food traceability requirements.”
Speaking of equipment, we asked respondents to rank 10 areas where capital spending dollars would be allocated, and machinery and systems again ranked highly. Control systems took the top spot this year over process equipment and packaging equipment, which ranked second and third respectively. Electronic records and digital field devices (sensors, meters, etc.) rounded out the top five.
That jibes with the answers to the question, “How is digital technology impacting your facility?” where 28% said they were replacing paper records with electronic records. Another 19% said their plants were shifting from local servers to cloud computing. However, it’s worth noting that 22% did claim they were pressing pause, taking a wait-and-see approach to digital technology.
When it comes to the maintenance workers, 52% of respondents said their companies are rolling out on-the-job training programs to expand maintenance workers’ skill sets this year, while another 44% will hire additional maintenance technicians.
Routine maintenance duties are being assigned to machine operators in 41% of the respondents’ plants, but 34% are using condition monitoring tools to drive preventive maintenance, in theory making maintenance easier to plan around for the facilities in question.
Looking for labor
No matter how much automation and equipment food & beverage processors install, it appears that recruiting and retaining workers will always be a challenge. Our survey results show a slight change in thinking when it comes to the labor shortages today.
The number of respondents who said they were not having trouble filling plant jobs rose from 16% last year to 23% this year, but don’t let that data point fool you. This year, 5% more said worker shortages were critical and impacting production (37% in 2025, 32% in 2024). 29% said labor shortages have always been bad and claimed nothing had really changed in the past year. A small silver lining might be that fewer people (29%) said it was worse than it had been in the past, compared to a significant portion of respondents (45%) who said the same last year.
Regardless, processors remain committed to developing ways to overcome these workforce issues, as only 14% of the respondents said their plant wasn’t addressing staffing issues at all (compared to 16% last year).
For 2025, not only are plants adding maintenance technicians (41%), but they’re also adding more in-house engineering capabilities (24% vs. 17% last year) and outsourcing more job functions (24% vs. 12% last year). Significantly more are expanding their in-house technical training (39%), while 23% said they were working with schools to develop electromechanical curricula.
That’s good news, as our respondents had plenty to say about educating the next generation of plant workers. One person noted the very real challenge of getting workers trained and up to speed because the “skill set of [the] general population [is] lacking in math, computer, science, comprehension, mechanics, spatial reasoning, even at rudimentary levels.” Another respondent said, “All areas are affected, as many recent graduates lack the basic skill sets and knowledge” needed to work in the industry.
Whether employing industry rookies or longtime veterans, 2025 could shape up to be a slower-than-average year for food & beverage workforce growth. The number of plants expected to add to the workforce slipped from 40% last year to 33%, though the same percentage (41%) said they would maintain their staffing level from last year.
Staff reductions appear on the horizon for some plants, as 16% said they’d reduce staffing either through active measures or through attrition — a different picture than last year, when only 5% claimed they’d take those steps.
According to our respondents, it isn’t likely that artificial intelligence (AI) will be the primary replacement for many of these workers anytime soon. We asked about AI or machine learning initiatives in the survey, and a surprising 79% said they were not pursuing them at this point. This, of course, is a smaller sample size, but if you look at some of the reasons why, it sheds a little light on the very wide spectrum of feelings the industry has when it comes to this hot topic in comparison to other industries.
One respondent said AI components were being integrated into existing machinery to increase response time to issues, indicate predictive and preventative maintenance and to troubleshoot stoppages. Another hinted that their company was undertaking it as a corporate initiative to be implemented with a new CMMS. Meanwhile, some said they were “still in the talk/research stage,” and that AI was coming but they were “just not ready to take that leap yet.”
Further along the spectrum, others said AI was “not trusted,” “not proven enough, too costly,” and “dangerous.” One person said the “near future is too uncertain” to implement AI or machine learning technology at this point.