Here’s something to chew over. The UK’s largest manufacturing sector is food and drink, the part that links what is produced on the farm to what is sold in the shop. At the last count, the sector employed some 412,000 workers, based in more than 8,200 businesses with a combined turnover of £96bn.

As the Food and Drink Federation (FDF) reports, food and drink accounts for almost 16% of the total manufacturing turnover, adding that the sector’s gross contribution to the economy is £21.5bn. This is almost equal to the combined value of the automotive and aerospace sectors.

But a fierce price war among the UK’s supermarkets is having a significant impact. Figures from Moore Stephens show that insolvencies among food and drink manufacturers in 2014 were 28% higher than in 2013 against the backdrop of an overall drop in the number of corporate failures.