British poultry business contributes billions to the economy

The British poultry meat industry made a total gross value added contribution to the UK’s GDP of £8.5 billion in 2023. Of this contribution, the industry itself generated £2.8 billion.

The remainder was generated by the industry’s spending on goods and services from its UK supply chain and wage payments to those working directly in the British poultry meat industry and for companies in its UK supply chain.

Since 2013, the poultry meat industry’s contribution to GDP has grown substantially, by some 31% in real terms. This equates to an average annual growth rate 2.7%. The poultry industry performed significantly stronger than the broader UK economy, which grew by just 17% over the same period in real terms, and also over 2.5 times faster than that of the UK agricultural industry, which has seen gross value added increase by some 12% in real terms since 2013.

Those calculations from Oxford Economics are published in a report ‘The Economic Impact of the Poultry Meat Industry’, published in August and commissioned by the British Poultry Council. In the report year, the poultry meat industry earned £10.3 billion in turnover. Just over a third (34%) of this was produced by poultry farmers, with the remaining 66% was produced by poultry processors.

The poultry meat industry’s direct contribution to GDP is particularly significant looking at the wider agricultural and meat processing industries, Oxford Economics says. In 2023, poultry farming was responsible for 26% of the £4.7 billion gross value added contribution made by all livestock producers, and 9% of the £13.7 billion generated by the entire agricultural sector.

Combining all the economic activities it stimulates, the researchers found that the British poultry meat industry also supported a £1.9 billion tax contribution to the UK Exchequer in 2023. This is equivalent to a third of all the public sector expenditure on services to agriculture, fisheries, and forestry in the 2022/23 financial year.

As for employment, the British poultry meat industry supported a total of 113,500 jobs across the UK in 2023. Of these, 35,700 workers (33%) were employed directly by the poultry meat industry, with some 27,100 involved in poultry meat processing, and 8,600 engaged in poultry farming. For every 100 jobs within the industry itself, a further 220 were created elsewhere in the economy because of the associated supply chain and wage-related impacts.

Tags: contribution, UK, economy, poultry meat, GDP