Vending

COVID hammers Europe’s vending, coffee service sales 31%

Image provided by iStock.

November 15, 2021

Europe's vending and coffee service industries suffered a 31% revenue loss from 2019 to €12.3 billion ($14.01 billion) in 2020 due to COVID-19 lockdowns, according to a recently released report form the European Vending & Coffee Service Association.

While the report reveals the current and latest trends with data up to the end of 2020, it has to be read in context of the lockdowns and extreme limitations placed on businesses last year, the association noted in a press release.

For the first time the significant hit to both vends and revenue last year has been quantified across Europe, while other developments demonstrate continuing technology trends as well as an acceleration in the roll out of certain new innovations, including micro markets and various payment solutions.

This year, the report has been expanded in terms of the inclusion of two additional markets, namely Finland and Norway, bringing the total markets covered to 24. These two countries complement the Swedish and Danish market reports and complete a detailed analysis of the sought-after Nordic region.

From a high-level point of view, the report reveals the following developments:

• There are now 4.4 million vending machines across Europe, delivering 25.4 billion vends annually.
• The Italian market again counts the largest field base with over 800,000 machines.
• The overall vending machine penetration across Europe is about 200 people per machine. The Netherlands has the highest rate (with only 55 people for every machine), with Turkey having the lowest (1,890).
• The German market revenue is €2.53 billion ($2.88 billion), a decrease of 20% from 2019, but still the largest market by revenue.
• Hot drinks machines make up 96% of total vends in Norway and 94% in Finland.
• Despite revenue losses due to COVID of 14%, the underlying trends in Poland remain remarkably positive with continued significant investment in new machines (a field base increase of 10% in 2020).

This edition of the EVA Market Report starts a new categorization of markets into a tiered system, where the largest markets (previously the "big six") are known as tier 1, and other countries are organized into tiers 2, 3 and 4 depending on the size of that market.

The report furthermore sees for the first time the inclusion of the coffee-to-go segment in the U.K. national report, where the concept is strongest and already well established. As of next year, statistics on this segment will be rolled out to the other markets.

The full study consists of a European report outlining the continent-wide trends and developments containing a total of 179 pages, with 24 individual national reports containing 22 pages of data each.
EVA members have free access to all the reports and can request it directly via the EVA secretariat.

For an update on how the coronavirus pandemic has affected convenience services, click here.