Beverage manufacturers – including breweries -, the food industry and pig and cattle farmers were particularly hard hit.
The failure of major events is noticeable in the breweries.
The current corona lockdown is putting the domestic food industry under economic pressure. The catering and hotel sales have collapsed completely, and exports to neighboring countries have also slowed. Beverage manufacturers – including breweries -, the food industry and pig and cattle farmers have been hit particularly hard.
The food industry is affected to different degrees. “Depending on the industry and the importance of the different sales channels (note: food retailing or gastronomy / hotel / tourism), the losses amount to between 20 and 60 percent,” said Katharina Koßdorff, the managing director of the WKÖ food industry association, about the APA.
There is increased demand for staple foods and ready-made products for the food retail sector, but the beverage industry is suffering from the lack of sales, since in addition to the catering and hotel industry, all public events in the field of sport, culture and events have been canceled.
As a rule, the food industry cannot compensate for lost sales by increasing sales in the supermarkets. “Those who have not had a strong foothold in the food retail trade have a hard time,” said the industry representative. One hopes for a “normalization” by the end of the year.
The small bakers, butchers and confectioners are also massively affected by the catering and hotel lockdown. Companies that are heavily dependent on tourism and catering would be “totally in the air,” said the managing director of the WKÖ Federal Food Industry Guild, Anka Lorencz, in an APA interview.
For the commercial sector, only counter sales and delivery to private customers remain. The representative of the Chamber of Commerce is also calling for a sales replacement for the catering and hotel food suppliers, because sales have completely collapsed there. Sales at Christmas markets – for gingerbread bakers, for example – would also be discontinued this year.
“Companies with a focus on the counter business and a good reputation have the fewest problems,” said the industry representative. “They'll make ends meet.” For many companies in the food industry, paying out the Christmas bonus will be an economic feat, Lorencz expects.
The current lockdown in domestic agriculture hits cattle and pig farmers particularly hard. The several weeks of closure of the catering and tourism businesses in most of the European Union and also in Austria caused demand and thus meat prices to collapse.
When it comes to beef, there is a lack of customers in the catering and hotel industry, and not so much of it is cooked at home, said Adolf Marksteiner, the head of the “Animal Products” department at the Austrian Chamber of Agriculture, at the APA. In the second corona lockdown compared to the first, the positive outlook for tourism is missing this time.
This “relative uncertainty” about the further development of the corona pandemic in the next few months is also evident on the agricultural markets, according to the agricultural expert. “Nobody stores goods if they don't know when they need them.” The supply situation is “plentiful, at depressed and poor prices,” said the representative of the Chamber of Agriculture. But there is good demand for seasonal vegetables, eggs and martini geese, for example.
The gastro lockdown also affects the food certifier Fairtrade. “A third of Fairtrade coffee sales are made in the catering trade,” said Fairtrade Austria boss Hartwig Kirner to the APA. The grocery trade more than compensates for the “lockdown effects” in the catering industry when it comes to coffee sales. Overall, the organization expects growth this year despite the corona crisis. Sales of Fairtrade-certified products in Austria in 2019 were 351 million euros.
