UK manufacturers' sales by product: 2019 results

• The total value of UK manufacturers' product sales was £396.6 billion in 2019, a fall of 1.2% compared with £401.4 billion in 2018.

• Sales within the manufacture of motor vehicles, trailers and semi-trailers industry saw the largest decline, falling by £3.5 billion in 2019 to an overall total of £53.2 billion.

• Large diesel vehicles (between 1,500 cubic centimetres (cc) and 2,500cc) showed the biggest decline in product sales in 2019, falling by £2.2 billion to a total of £4.2 billion.

• Despite showing a small decline, petrol vehicles (over 1,500cc) had the largest sales of any product manufactured by UK businesses and recorded sales of £21.5 billion in 2019.

• The manufacture of food products, the biggest manufacturing division in the UK, showed a decline in sales of £0.9 billion, partly attributed to declining sales of cakes and pastries as well as prepared meals and dishes based on meat.

• The largest increase in product sales was from whisky, up by £0.4 billion to £4.1 billion.

Data collection and sources

ProdCom estimates are based on a sample of businesses surveyed annually. Data are collected from a sample of approximately 21,500 businesses, covering 240 subsectors of the mining, quarrying and manufacturing industry sectors and approximately 3,800 products.It is sometimes necessary to suppress figures for certain products to avoid disclosing information about an individual business. The ProdCom technical report describes the methods used to safeguard the information provided in confidence to us. Our commentary must also avoid disclosing information about individual businesses.

ProdCom estimates are designated as National Statistics, which means that the data are produced in compliance with the Code of Practice for Statistics.

Division detail

For Division 19 (coke and refined petroleum products), only one product (pitch and pitch coke, obtained from coal tar or from other mineral tars) is included. This product is located in one industry (19100: the manufacture of coke oven products) and there have been no businesses specifically classified to this industry in the ProdCom publication since 2015.

For Division 24 (the manufacture of basic metals), estimates for the manufacture of basic iron and steel, and of ferro-alloys are not included in the overall UK ProdCom sales figures or in the divisional total, as these relate to an administrative source that is disclosive. Because of disclosure issues, we have combined Divisions 11 and 12 (beverages and tobacco) to allow for estimates at this level of aggregation to be made available.

Quality and methodology

The ProdCom survey methodology is outlined in the Quality and Methodology Information report and in the ProdCom technical report. Standard errors are available for most products, to inform users of the precision of the estimates. The 2019 revised estimates are based on a response rate of 80.7%.

What's changed in this release?

Product codes are updated most years to ensure that ProdCom product codes are aligned with the EU classification of products by industry (CPA) and in response to feedback from member states and users.