Across the UK food system today there is no shortage of ambition.
Over the past five years businesses have set increasingly bold commitments on climate, nature, health and resilience. Net zero roadmaps have been published, regenerative agriculture pilots launched, reformulation strategies developed and new supplier engagement programmes created.
In many respects the sector has moved further and faster than many predicted even a decade ago. Yet in conversations with senior leaders across the system over the past year, a different question has increasingly begun to surface. Not whether change is needed, and not even what needs to be done, but something more operational and arguably more difficult: can we actually deliver all of this at the pace now required?
What’s holding F&B back?
This question sits at the heart of our Execution at Risk report, drawing on live insight from leaders across its cross-industry network spanning farming, manufacturing, retail, finance and academia. Through our network, and the organisations we are actively working with, we see the same tension emerging across organisations: strong strategic intent coupled with the growing realisation that delivering systemic change inside complex businesses is far harder than setting the ambition.
For food manufacturers in particular, this challenge is especially acute.
Manufacturers sit at the centre of a highly interconnected system, balancing pressures from retailers, investors, regulators, suppliers and consumers while operating within one of the most cost-pressured environments the sector has faced in decades.
At the same time expectations continue to expand: decarbonising supply chains, supporting farmers through transition, delivering healthier products, protecting nature and maintaining affordability for consumers. Individually these goals are rational and necessary. Collectively they represent one of the most complex operational transformations the sector has ever attempted.
What our report suggests is that the real constraint is no longer strategy. It is capability.
But critically, this is not just about sustainability expertise. The most significant gaps are emerging in the functions that design products, shape demand and make commercial decisions every day. Across the organisations in our research, commercial and marketing teams consistently emerge as the lowest-scoring functions for sustainability knowledge and confidence. These are the teams deciding what goes into the range, how products are positioned, what gets promoted and where investment flows. If they are not confident linking climate, health and resilience to commercial performance, those priorities struggle to translate into real decisions.
The same pattern is emerging in procurement, finance and risk functions. Buyers are still primarily incentivised around cost, availability and continuity of supply, which is entirely rational in a volatile market. But sustainability considerations are not yet consistently embedded into those decision frameworks.
Availability remains king, yet the long-term resilience of supply is rarely assessed through the same lens. In practical terms, the capability gap is therefore less about knowing what to do, and more about being able to navigate trade-offs in real time. That includes the ability to evaluate product and sourcing decisions through multiple lenses, integrate fragmented data into decision-making and operate with shared ownership across functions rather than relying on a central sustainability team.
Alongside this, more technical capabilities such as carbon literacy, data infrastructure and scenario modelling remain uneven, but these only become powerful when they are connected to the day-to-day decisions made across commercial, procurement and finance teams.
Connected systems and teams
In many businesses sustainability programmes were initially driven by small but committed specialist teams tasked with helping organisations understand emerging risks and opportunities. That phase was essential in building momentum and awareness. But transformation of the scale now required cannot sit within a single function.
Delivery increasingly depends on commercial teams making different product decisions, procurement teams engaging suppliers differently, operations teams rethinking efficiency and waste, finance teams evaluating investment through new lenses and leadership teams creating the conditions for longer-term thinking in what remains a highly volatile market.
A simple example illustrates the challenge. A manufacturer may set a target to reduce the carbon footprint of a core product range through reformulation or ingredient switching. But delivering that change requires accurate supplier data, commercial teams willing to accept potential short-term margin impact, procurement teams able to source alternative inputs at scale, and NPD teams confident in maintaining product quality and consumer acceptance. Where any one of those capabilities is missing, progress slows or stalls entirely.
In other words, sustainability has outgrown the sustainability team.
Mary-Ann Kilby, managing director of Warburtons and part of the Future Food Movement leadership network, reflects on this challenge from the perspective of a family business deeply rooted in the UK food system.
“Family food businesses understand the importance of taking the long view,” Kilby said. “Transformation across climate, health and nature will not happen overnight, but manufacturers have a critical role in driving practical change through our supply chains and products. The real challenge now is ensuring organisations have the capability to turn ambition into action.”
The next phase of collaboration
Alongside capability within organisations, the report also highlights the importance of collaboration across them.
Food system challenges rarely sit neatly within company boundaries. Farmers, manufacturers, retailers and investors are deeply interconnected, yet incentives, risk structures and time horizons often remain misaligned. Without stronger collaboration across the value chain, even the most well-intentioned strategies risk slowing as they encounter the practical realities of implementation.
In practice, this next phase of collaboration will need to be more structured and more deliberate. This could include pre-competitive data-sharing platforms to improve supply chain transparency, aligned farmer support schemes that reduce duplication and risk at farm level, co-funded pilot projects to test new approaches at scale, and the development of common reporting frameworks to reduce complexity for suppliers operating across multiple customers. This is also where new types of industry platforms and convening models are beginning to play a role, enabling organisations to share insight, test approaches and build capability collectively rather than in isolation.
This is where institutions such as Harper Adams University see an important role in supporting the sector through the next phase of transition. Professor Ken Sloan, vice-chancellor of Harper Adams University and a member of the Future Food Movement network, emphasises the importance of skills and leadership across the system.
As he notes: “The transition to a more sustainable food system depends on leadership and capability across the entire value chain, from farm to factory to retail. Universities, industry and policymakers all have a role to play in building the knowledge and skills needed to deliver that transition.”
Encouragingly, there are already examples of what good looks like emerging across the sector.
Leading organisations are moving towards dedicated cross-functional delivery teams, integrating sustainability KPIs into commercial roles, and developing closer co-development partnerships with suppliers.
Some are beginning to introduce internal carbon pricing to better inform investment decisions, while others are investing in digital tools to improve measurement, traceability and decision-making across their operations and supply chains.
Despite the pressures the sector faces, the UK food system remains uniquely well placed to address these challenges. Its relative proximity and interconnectedness create the potential for collaboration, learning and leadership that many other markets struggle to replicate.
Beyond strategy
However, the next phase of transformation will require a shift in focus.
The industry must now invest in capability-building at scale, not just strategy. It must prioritise collaborative pilots over isolated innovation, and it must redesign governance so that delivery is owned across commercial, procurement, finance and operations rather than sitting within a single function.
Encouragingly, many organisations are already beginning to make this shift. The next 12–24 months will determine how widely that capability is built across the system.
Because ambition without delivery ultimately risks eroding trust, and trust is arguably the most valuable currency the food system has. The UK food industry has never lacked ambition, the question now is whether it can build the capability to match it.
About the author
Kate Cawley is the founder and managing director of The Future Food Movement, and founder of sustainability consultancy, Veris Strategies.
Kate founded Future Food Movement to boost business competency and confidence to act, bridging the gap from Boardroom to shop floor with a team of experts in climate, nutrition, public health, regenerative systems, behaviour change and governance, empowering the industry to drive meaningful action.
