Identification of Factors Influencing the Production Capacity of Food and Beverage Industries (A Case of Khorasan-Razavi Province)

Food and beverage processing industry is one of the most important industrial sectors in all countries which relates to food security. In recent years, most of food processing firms have faced with many problems in Iran. Many of these firms work under their nominal and installed capacity which it causes endurance of overhead costs and increase the price of products and leads to eliminate these industries in production and competition. This study identifies affecting factors on the food and beverage production capacity utilization in Khorasan Razavi province. Thus, a sample size of 130 units of food and beverage were chosen by random classification method. Then, by using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) causal relationship between these factors were analyzed and the proposed model was examined. Based on the results of this model, government, production costs and similar products imports will decrease production capacity utilization and labor skills, investment and management will also increase the production capacity utilization.