How to create a thriving food system? Work together
03 September 2025UK food and drink faces huge challenges - but collaboration and innovation can unlock resilience, growth, and a thriving food system.
It won’t be news to you that the UK food and drink industry is being buffeted by a perfect storm of challenges - both urgent threats that demand immediate action to address and persistent issues that require steady stewardship to navigate.
Geo-political tensions, climbing inflation, and a struggling economy are causing great uncertainty. Legislation, changing behaviours, and the road to net zero are creating layers of complexities. Extreme weather, resource scarcity, and shock events are testing resilience. And how businesses respond will shape their fortunes for years to come, separating winners from losers.
This constant flux of change has brought us to a critical juncture: we are entering a period of transformation where the industry’s next steps will determine not only the future of the food system, but also the economy, society, and environment.
Why? Because the UK food system, which provides over four million jobs and represents 7% of GDP, is critical to the nation’s infrastructure. The country cannot afford for it to fail.
A chance to succeed together
However, while all of this may sound quite daunting, there are two good reasons for optimism. First, our industry’s challenges also create many opportunities to improve both the world we live in and your business’s bottom line. Second, forging the future of the food system is a shared responsibility that calls for joint action - combining efforts and expertise to reap broad and mutual benefits.
It’s against this backdrop that we hosted in our inaugural ‘Future of the UK Food System’ event on Wednesday 1st October at The Brewery in London. This brought together senior leaders from retailers, suppliers, supply chain partners and policymakers to discuss the realities of a food system under stress, and explore real-world examples of how businesses can collaborate and innovate to create a sustainable, resilient, and prosperous future.
We designed the agenda around five key themes for unlocking the industry’s potential:
Grow: Driving sustainable growth by helping producers innovate, adapt, and thrive.
Make: Responsible food production and climate resilience
Move: Building robust supply chains and infrastructure
Shop: Responding to evolving shopper needs and retail innovation
Eat: Securing healthier, more sustainable diets for all
These were disseminated across a variety of activities on a main stage and three breakout tracks.
A system-wide lens
The agenda included keynotes from Sainsbury’s CEO, Simon Roberts, and Bramble Partners Founder, Henry Dimbleby MBE, along with panel discussions featuring C-suite leaders from Tesco, Nestlé, Greencore, Danone, Cranswick, Bidcorp, and The Food Foundation on food system dynamics and strategies to unlock rural growth.
Growing pains
As traditional routes to growth become less reliable, businesses are under pressure to adapt and diversify. One breakout track, ‘Driving growth in the food system’, explored the structural shifts reshaping the landscape, from the integration of data and automation in stores to the commercial implications of changing consumer behaviours.
Climate of resilience
Climate change is no longer a future risk: it’s a present and accelerating danger. In a breakout track on ‘Climate and resilience’, IGD unveiled a new model quantifying the financial impact of climate risk across the UK food system, before the discussion moved on to highlighting where action is needed and identifying business opportunities.
One of the sessions also tackled the reality of navigating the road to net zero in this complex operating environment.
Innovation in waste
The third breakout track, ‘Reimagining waste: from environmental necessity to economic opportunity’, looked at treating food waste as a social imperative and a commercial opportunity. From low carbon fertilisers to circular planning, our focus will be on solutions that turn waste into value.
The variety of speakers we secured from all corners of the industry and beyond exemplifies our guiding philosophy: if we work together, we can build a thriving food system.