Welcome to 2015, the year of ... At this point, there's no way of intelligently completing that sentence. But with a solid economy as underpinning, manufacturing in general should have a pretty good year. Regardless of the larger economy, the food & beverage industry seems to plod along recession-proof. But also somewhat recovery-proof. That's the good and the bad of being in this business. It takes a lot to move the needle either way. We've packaged a couple of forward-looking stories in this issue. The most statistical is our annual Manufacturing Outlook Survey (p51). We've been taking this survey of how plant operations people foresee the new year for 14 years now. Never has the level of optimism been this high (76 percent). It was 67 percent - a very good rate - last year and, for comparisons sake, 44 percent in 2009.
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