According to the Canadean intelligence database (globaldata.com) on the outlook of the biscuit market, China is the largest plain cookie and cracker market by volume, with a 63% projected market growth between 2014 and 2018, followed by India, with an expected growth of over 103%. Latin America, Western Europe, South East Asia, North America, and the Middle East and Africa also offer high growth rates of between 30 and 66%.
It is hard to meet such rapidly increasing market demands without fully or partly automated production lines, especially in developing markets where the share of manual processes is still high. Food manufacturers mirror this statement, naming investments in technology as the main source of significant cost rises (44%) up until 2021, followed by investments in innovation into new packaging types (43%) and complying with legislative changes (33%). At the same time, 29% of respondents expect to benefit from investment in manufacturing equipment over the next five years.