UK automotive industry sales shrink drastically

The UK has been one of the countries in Europe most impacted by the coronavirus, being one of the first countries worldwide hit by the Delta variant and racking up the highest number of COVID-19 deaths in Europe after Russia. The resulting lockdowns, hospitalisations and self-isolation orders have also impacted the sales figures for UK product manufacturers in 2020.

As evidenced by our chart, the most lucrative divisions like food production, motor vehicle manufacturing, fabricated metal production and the manufacturing of machinery and equipment have all seen declining revenue compared to 2019. The car industry has seen an especially sharp decline, with its sales volume reduced by a third. This could be attributed to the worldwide chip shortage as well as workers having to stay at home due to contact tracing alerts and lockdowns. Only two product categories were able to come out of 2020 with increased sales activities: Pharmaceutical products and paper and related products.

While the car industry in particular has started to pick up again in the last couple of weeks, with case numbers rising again worldwide it’s probably still a long way to go for the most affected industries to reach pre-pandemic levels.