LAUSR

The food and drink industry is one of the leading manufacturing sectors in the economies of many EU countries. However, when compared to other global food and drink producers, the EU food and drink industry has been facing a persistent decrease in competitiveness in past decades. In this paper, we analyse companies from the food and drink industry in the selected EU countries. The sample includes more than 6000 companies from the food industry and more than 1000 companies from the drink industry in the selected EU countries in the period from 2011 to 2015. Given the available financial data for the food and drink companies from the Amadeus database, we calculate their liquidity, leverage, activity and profitability ratios and evaluate their relative efficiency using multiple criteria. The efficiency is defined in terms of data envelopment analysis using financial ratios as inputs and outputs in the BCC output-oriented model. Findings reveal which countries have the greatest proportion of efficient companies and what the main areas of (in)efficiency for companies within each country are. The efficiency is analysed with regard to the size of the companies.