Sector read

Which UK industries pay their suppliers slowest?

By Artur Vainer, Founder — YORXEN · Published 14 July 2026 · Last updated 26 July 2026

Information, not financial advice.

As at 26 July 2026, manufacturing was the slowest-paying major sector in the UK, at a median 45 days to settle a supplier invoice. Financial services was the fastest, at 21. That 24-day gap comes out of the 5,817 large UK companies that file statutory reports on how they pay and carry an industry code to group them by. The benchmark they sit against — the median across all 6,059 companies with a recent filing — was 31 days.

I run a business that watches this data for a living, so here is the founder's version of what those figures actually tell you — not the methodology, the read.

The sector spread, in one table

Companies and LLPs within the reporting duty file twice a year, including their average time to pay suppliers. Group those filings by industry and the main sectors line up like this (median average days to pay, number of firms reporting in each):

Dot: faster than the 31-day register-wide median around it slower

A handful of smaller SIC sections — mining, agriculture, real estate, arts, and other services — are left out of the table for brevity: 397 firms between them, which is why the thirteen rows above sum to 5,420 rather than the full 5,817. All of them sit inside this same 21-to-45-day band, so manufacturing and financial services remain the two ends of the range.

The same spread, drawn against the median

The point is not any single row. It's the range. A supplier invoicing a manufacturer waits, on average, 24 days longer for the money than one invoicing a bank — the same 45-against-21 gap, seen from the supplier's side of the ledger.

Slow doesn't automatically mean bad faith

Here's the part most "worst payers" lists skip. Manufacturing paying in 45 days is not, on its own, evidence that manufacturers are trying to stiff their suppliers. It largely reflects how the sector works: long supply chains, staged deliveries, longer contractual terms baked in before anyone sends an invoice. Financial services move money as their core business — of course their payments clear faster.

So read the sector figure as context, not a character verdict. A 45-day median tells you what "normal" looks like for that industry. What matters for your cash is whether a specific customer runs to the middle of that range or drifts past the far end of it. The register carries both the sector pattern and the individual company's own filing, and the second is the one you act on.

Because the tail is where it hurts. A thin band of companies in this data report paying not in 45 days but in 90-plus, and the single worst filing runs to roughly 225 days. That is more than seven months from invoice to cash. One customer like that on your ledger is a different kind of problem from a sector median.

What the gap does to your cash

Take it out of the abstract. You invoice a manufacturing client on 30-day terms and they pay to the sector's median of 45. That is 15 extra days of your money sitting on their side of the table, per invoice. One invoice, you absorb it. A rolling ledger of them, and you are effectively lending your largest customers working capital they never asked you for and never pay interest on.

The gap compounds with concentration. A supplier whose biggest accounts all sit in slow-paying sectors is carrying a structural cash lag that has nothing to do with how well the business is run and everything to do with who it sells to. You can be profitable on paper and still short of cash in the account, because the cash is real but it hasn't arrived yet.

What the sector median can tell you

The sector median is context for planning terms and collections, not a recommendation of a finance product. Compare it with the customer’s own latest filing and your aged-receivables data.

FAQ

Which UK sector pays its suppliers the slowest?
Manufacturing, at a median 45 days across 977 reporting firms — the slowest of the major sectors in the statutory payment data.

Which sector pays fastest?
Financial services, at a median 21 days across 640 firms.

What's the average across all sectors?
31 days — the median across all 6,059 large UK companies with a recent statutory filing, and the benchmark the chart above is drawn against. The 5,817 of those that carry an industry code, which are the ones grouped into sectors here, run a day slower at 32.

Does a slow sector median mean a company is in trouble?
No. A sector median reflects how that industry contracts and pays — long supply chains push manufacturing higher, for example. It's context for what's normal, not a verdict on any one company. Check the individual firm's own filing before drawing a conclusion.

How late is the worst case?
A thin tail of companies report paying beyond 90 days, and the single worst filing in this dataset is around 225 days — over seven months.

Where do these numbers come from?
The UK's statutory payment-practices register, where every company above the size threshold must publish its payment performance twice a year. All figures here are counted directly from that register.

Source: Companies House statutory payment-practices register (payment practices and performance reporting duty). Open Government Licence v3.0. Sector medians are calculated from the latest filing per company, counting only reports whose period ends within fifteen months of the register's newest period end. Sector figures and firm counts read from /data/sectors.json on 26 July 2026; the 31-day register-wide median from /data/meta.json.