Food industry: energy costs are once again weighing on profit margins

Detailed summary

In September, producer prices for electricity and gas rose by 35.9 per cent year-on-year, whilst those for food, drink and tobacco fell by 1.4 per cent. Recove…

In September 2026, producer prices for electricity and gas supply on the domestic market had risen by 35.9 per cent compared with a year earlier, according to Istat (national statistics office). This figure does not necessarily correspond to the prices paid by individual businesses, which also depend on their supply contracts. Excluding energy, industrial producer prices rose by 3.5 per cent. For food companies, the trend is the opposite: in the same month, again according to Istat, producer prices for food, drink and tobacco fell by 1.4 per cent year-on-year. This disparity brings the issue of industrial costs and their impact on profit margins back into the spotlight.

Gas prices also remain high and volatile. On the Amsterdam TTF market – the benchmark for Europe – the price for November deliveries reached €100 per megawatt-hour at the end of October, before falling in the following days. This volatility makes cost planning more complex and is prompting companies to monitor consumption on their production lines.

A food processing plant consumes energy in two ways: it heats to cook, pasteurise, sterilise and wash, and it cools to preserve, mature and maintain the cold chain. Milk, for example, is first heated for pasteurisation and then cooled immediately afterwards. Often, these two functions are carried out by separate systems, even when the heat produced by the refrigeration systems could be recovered and reused.

Refrigeration is one of the main items of electricity consumption. According to the white paper ‘Energy Efficiency in the Food Sector’, authored by Massimo Gozzi for Tecniche Nuove in collaboration with Viessmann – a brand now part of Carrier Global Corporation – cooling and refrigeration account for 28 per cent of the electricity consumed by a factory, followed by other motors (18 per cent), pumps (17 per cent) and compressed air used to power machinery and equipment (14 per cent).

Energy requirements vary significantly from one product to another.

Opening of the article, excerpted from La Repubblica. To read the rest, open the article on the publisher's site.