Most food and drink manufacturing is not on the BICS eligible-sector list. Only three food activities are listed: manufacture of oils and fats, starches and starch products, and sugar. Dairy, meat, bakery, brewing, soft drinks and ready-meal production are not currently eligible. If you make oils/fats, starch or sugar, you may qualify — subject to your product (HS) codes and the 25% site floor.
“Food and drink” is a huge sector, but BICS doesn’t cover all of it. The government’s eligible-sector list is deliberately narrow on food — it targets a handful of energy-intensive ingredient processes, not the food industry as a whole. This page is the honest version: what’s in, what’s out, and what to do if you’re a food manufacturer who isn’t on the list.
Which food activities qualify?
Only these three are on the eligible-sector list:
- Manufacture of oils and fats — e.g. vegetable oil pressing and refining.
- Manufacture of starches and starch products — including glucose, dextrose and starch derivatives.
- Manufacture of sugar — sugar refining and production.
These are electricity-intensive ingredient processes, which is why they made the list. Even here, eligibility is an AND-rule: the product must also fall under an eligible HS commodity code, so a specialist confirms the exact output before you rely on it.
Not on the list — what if you make other food or drink?
Dairy, meat and fish processing, bakery, brewing and distilling, soft drinks, confectionery and ready meals are not currently on the BICS eligible-sector list. That’s the government’s decision on which sectors the scheme covers, not a judgement on how much electricity you use. Two practical points:
- Check your exact classification. Some ingredient lines sit under chemicals rather than food (for example certain starch-derived or oil-derived products), so it’s worth confirming your precise SIC and HS codes rather than assuming from the broad “food” label.
- BICS isn’t the only lever. If you’re not eligible for BICS, the savings usually still sit in procurement structure, non-commodity cost optimisation and metering — which is where most of our food-sector work has always delivered.
Many BICS guides imply “food & drink” broadly qualifies. Against the published list, that’s not accurate — only oils/fats, starch and sugar are in. We’d rather tell you that up front than have you build an application that fails. Search the full eligible-sector list →
If you do qualify: the site-mix reality
Oils, starch and sugar plants are classic mixed sites — processing alongside storage, packing and offices on the same supply. BICS support is pro-rata to the eligible share, above the 25% floor, so isolating the qualifying process load with clean sub-metering is what defends the band.
What it's worth to an eligible producer
At an indicative £37/MWh on eligible consumption, a mid-size producer using 6 GWh a year is in the region of £220,000 annually before site-mix scaling, plus the one-off backdated payment to April 2026. See the savings table →
We’ve delivered major energy savings for food businesses through procurement — £2.4m of cost avoidance for dairy processor Freshways and £70k a year for Welsh Sausage Company. Those savings came from buying strategy, not BICS (neither sits on the eligible list) — but where a food business does qualify, we handle the eligibility and evidence too.
Make oils, fats, starch or sugar?
Check eligibility and we’ll send a band-by-band summary for your site within 24 hours.