Vending machines in crisis amid falling sales and booming costs

After years of gradual recovery post-Covid, the food and beverage vending machine sector is once again posting a negative balance: in the first nine months of the year, the number of consumptions fell by 3.4% to 2.9 billion, while turnover fell by 1.7% to 1.19 billion (it was 1.6 billion in the whole of 2023).

According to data compiled by Ipsos for Confida, the Italian vending machine association, coffee, which accounts for 57% of consumption, lost 2.9% compared to the same period in 2023. Cold beverages also fell by 3.6%, snacks (-2.8%) and ice cream (-34.3%). On the other hand, products registering a positive trend are energy drinks (+0.9%), fruit drinks with low (+8.9%) or high (+3.12%) fruit concentration, sweet (+4.7%) and salty (+0.5%) snacks, and confectionery (i.e. chewing gum and candies, +5.2%).

Among the factors behind the slowdown in revenues is still smart working: Confida cites a study by the Milan Polytechnic, according to which remote working is stable with over 3.55 million employees practising it, and with growth estimates for 2025. "These are figures that must also be read in the light of the fact that we are still 19% down on pre-Covid in terms of the number of consumptions, while smart working has grown by 540%. Moreover,' says Massimo Trapletti, president of Confida, 'in hospitals restrictive measures on visits are still in place, and it is no coincidence that we record a 35% drop there. But the decrease in families' purchasing power is also weighing on them. Lay-offs have increased and this certainly does not help sales in workplaces. And above all, these figures must be put in relation to the increase in raw materials. Coffee has increased by 68% in the last year and accounts for 57% of automatic sales, but this is only the most striking case because increases have also affected milk and chocolate, for example, as well as pre-packaged products. The combination of rising costs and falling purchases, coupled with the fact that consumption of ready-to-eat meals is not taking off, is putting the sector in crisis. "The price increases practised over the last two years have been around 12-13%," Trapletti continues, "and they are not sufficient to compensate for the companies' higher outlays. Moreover, once the price increase has been obtained, it takes time for the technicians to adapt the 830,000 machines in the area, with a delay of months for there to be an effective impact on takings'.

A situation that is also causing difficulties in the sale of vending machines themselves, a sector in which Italy is a leader in Europe and which has suffered a slowdown of over 20% in the first half of 2024. For these reasons Confida has asked the government to be among the beneficiaries in the Transition 5.0 plan. "The Industry 4.0 incentive plan has led to a renewal of the machine park,' says Trapletti, 'now increasingly equipped with touch screens (+20% in the last year) and payment apps (one third of the total), but for technical reasons we are not included in the Transition 5.0 beneficiaries because the certification costs, as envisaged by the standard today, would become unsustainable compared to the cost of the machines themselves, which would also guarantee the energy saving parameters envisaged. A dialogue is underway with Mimit to find a solution'. The sector in Italy has over 3 thousand companies employing approximately 33 thousand people, but Confida also denounces the chronic lack of personnel: with Randstad a recruiting campaign has just started throughout Italy.