This paper deals with a miscellaneous group of food-related industries not directly covered by the principal papers of the Symposium. Some of these serve the needs of larger processing companies for intermediates. Others produce a variety of products for retail sale. Few are large employers of labour or capital but cumulatively they make a significant contribution to the Scottish economy. The paper lists the type of manufacture in some detail, and the product range—from tripe dressing to confectionery—is too wide to permit easy classification.

These industries serve a virtually non-expanding total market, and are thus for the most part highly competitive, quality and service as much as price being the chief weapon of survival. In general, production is concentrated in small units of modest capital investment. Thus they have the advantage of flexibility and can quickly change product emphasis as circumstances demand, in contrast to the giants of the food industry, limited as they are by the inertia of their size. But these ‘service’ industries have the double disadvantage of limited access to technical and scientific resources, and the burden of complex legislation which falls proportionately more heavily on them than on their larger brethren.

The paper examines aspects of these limitations and outlines suggestions for the practical resolution of some of these disadvantages.