The political salience of environmental issues has gone up and down this year. But the facts on the ground mean it will increasingly become front of mind for the public and our policymakers in 2025 and beyond.
Understanding the indirect social and environmental impacts a business’ activities carry is increasingly recognised by operators who know that prioritising a narrow idea of profitability at the growing expense of societal welfare will not continue to be tolerated.
As this awareness grows, the food industry’s connection to climate change, environmental degradation, and chronic ill-health will continue to call for actionable data insights to a greater degree of granularity and transparency. Leadership teams investing in the skillsets and collaborations needed to enable this are already benefitting from the value this can add, but it is not easy.
Funding this capability within a commercial landscape and shifting global context means managing the relationship between short-term commerciality, long-term sustainability, and the many dimensions of challenge implicit within it.
As a result, I think we can expect to see the utility of multi-year retrospective reporting in high growth organisations with strong M&A questioned for the limited degree of meaningful, granular detail it provides. And in its place, much stronger advocacy for scenario modelling and commercial disclosure as the importance of delivering deep decarbonisation beyond the balance sheet intensifies.
This clarity has sharpened and reaffirmed key areas of focus. Three examples include:
Data and AI
Collaborating in the largest food and drink carbon impact assessment undertaken to date informed our first iteration of a transition plan, published earlier this year. Next year I see even further ambition in the quest for granular detail around data to inform decisions and the use of AI in the development and deployment of this strategy as material to the increased support we want to extend to clients, suppliers, and customers as we grow.
Transition planning beyond carbon.
Our transition plan is designed to help identify, evidence, and embed key levers of change, upskill our teams and inform new and existing partnerships. We continue to focus on the importance with which climate, nature and health are interlinked priorities across all these partnerships and look forward to the progress we can deliver together next year.
Commercial alignment.
Sustainability is now recognised as a strategic function reporting directly to our CFO, and the role of our finance team includes the development of P&L constructs that value societal and nature-based impacts. This will take time but is needed to ensure our transition planning is well-informed and commercially aligned across all sectors.
To make real progress in a business of our scale and complexity requires a talented multi-disciplinary team of pioneers and pragmatists. I’m very proud of everyone and so grateful of the support we’ve received from experts across the global industry.
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