22 Sep 2017 --- The UK food and drink industry has seen falling productivity as an era of cheap labor has reduced incentives to invest in efficiency-enhancing technologies, according to new research from OC&C Strategy Consultants. The drop in productivity cost food and drink producers an extra £400m (US$524 million) in labor costs in 2016, bringing the total labor cost to £8.6bn (US$11.6bn). This productivity squeeze is set to worsen as a result of the government’s planned increase in the National Minimum Wage through to 2020, coupled with an expected reduction in the supply of EU migrant labor following Brexit.