Ulster Bank economist Richard Ramsey suggesting it's now a pretty safe assumption that the Protocol has boosted food manufacturing in NI: food & beverage output amongst NI manufacturers has increased by 18.3% since Q1 2021, x2.5 the comparable growth rate amongst UK firms.
This makes sense as moving food across the sea border, to Belfast or Dublin, is the most regulatory onerous transaction so there is local substitution of GB goods. However Ulster Uni economist Esmond Birnie has suggested this could be 'wrong sort of growth'
By that he means that food production is a relatively low margin business and we haven't seen the higher margin manufacturing sectors grow in the same way. He suggests that's because they are bearing protocol costs like unsubstitutional GB inputs etc
There may also be some sector specific issues though: the highest productivity NI manufacturing sector is probably aerospace which took one of biggest hits during the pandemic & therefore has been slower to recover.
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