The US meat & poultry sector remains the largest end-market for food and beverage processing machinery, and PMMI and FPSA's 2026 Processing State of the Industry report expects it to stay that way—growing from just over $1.8 billion in machinery shipments in 2025 to roughly $2.1 billion by 2030, a 3.2% CAGR. But the forces driving that investment are shifting toward supply constraints and labor scarcity rather than broad expansion.
At the center is cattle supply. The report notes the US herd has trended down from a 1970s peak of roughly 132 million head to multi-decade lows near 86 million. The reduced herd has pushed calf and feeder cattle prices higher, compressing beef processor margins and intensifying the focus on yield.
With supply tight, even small gains in recoverable protein per animal can materially improve outcomes. This drives demand for systems that improve separation, deboning, trimming, and cut precision to reduce trim loss.
Because cattle run on long production cycles—slaughter age is around 23 months for cattle versus roughly six for pigs and under two for chickens—producers cannot quickly replenish supply.
Poultry's shorter cycle and flexible supply response have allowed processors to scale output faster, and as beef prices rose, some processors and retailers shifted toward poultry and pork, supporting facility investment and automation upgrades in poultry.
Labor is an additional driver. The report describes persistent staffing challenges in physically demanding, cold, slaughter-adjacent roles such as de-hoofing, evisceration, and quartering, challenges that are accelerating investment in automated carcass handling and primary-cuts equipment.
In poultry, the pattern differs: processors are targeting small repetitive tasks that bottleneck lines, such as conveyor-based systems that automatically reorient or "lane" chicken tenders before packaging.
For OEMs, the message is consistent across species: equipment that protects yield, stabilizes throughput, and removes hard-to-staff manual tasks is where capital is flowing.
SOURCE: 2026 Processing State of the Industry
For more insights from PMMI's Business Intelligence team, find reports, including Processing State of the Industry, Innovation for Packaging and Processing OEMs, and From Complexity to Capability, at https://www.pmmi.org/business-intelligence.
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