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Sustainability has been an important concept for a long time. While it gained more prominence in 2020, it is not a new idea. And, as is the very nature of sustainability, efforts evolve. Leigh Ann Johnston, sustainable business development at JBT Marel, highlights some of the key trends in this area that food and beverage manufacturers can expect from the rest of the year.

From high-profile pledges to more discreet efforts, the emphasis on corporate sustainability responsibility across the board has changed. Does it matter in food manufacturing today? Do people care?

McKinsey surveyed consumers in the US and globally to assess whether sustainability efforts remained important to them, finding that in the US, consumers consistently rank the quality, price and convenience of products as more important than their environmental impact, while in global markets, price and quality are the top characteristics for consumers in making a purchasing decision; environmental impact is ranked lower. On the producer end, Gitnux found that 76% of consumers expect food manufacturers to take the lead on societal and environmental issues.

JBT Marel conducted its own assessment in 2025, engaging with real processors across multiple food and beverage segments, and found that sustainability matters. During our conversations, four key themes rang loud and clear across the industry:

• Decarbonisation matters for energy costs. Food production and processing account for 15% of global annual fossil fuel use, and these costs are not decreasing.

• Conservation efforts, particularly water, are key. Conversations around water usage for data centers have led the news, but roughly 70% of today’s global freshwater resources are used for agriculture.

• Sustainable packaging is a priority. 77% of US consumers consider recyclability and circularity 'extremely important' or 'very important,' and all surveyed global consumers noted that a package’s recyclability is the number one factor they use to determine whether the packaging is sustainable.

• Transparency is vital. From product traceability and supply chain insights to the environmental footprint of their equipment, processors want to see, measure and report on their sustainability efforts.

You can’t manage what you can’t see. To measure, prioritise and grow these efforts, F&B processors need to see their impact – and to do that, they need data.

Data is the only way processors can make informed decisions about their operations, but simply seeing the numbers doesn’t lead to success in sustainability. Processors who take a three-pronged approach – bridging efficiency, innovation and real-time data analytics – will see the most success in their efforts. Not only will they move the needle and achieve their goals, they’ll also be able to prove their ROI.

Focus number one: Efficiency

Resource efficiency is a key focus area for food and beverage processors. Still, global processors with end-to-end sustainability reporting structures may find it easier to measure efficiency than medium- or small-sized operations.

For smaller companies beginning their sustainability efforts, start by thinking about where you have control and influence. Where can you highlight great practices you have in place but haven’t spoken about externally?

Reach out to your supply networks for available data, then collaborate to identify opportunities for efficiency. Are there retrofits or refurbishments to your existing equipment that could be more energy-or water-efficient? Adapting existing technologies will reduce resource needs and improve the bottom line.

Focus number two: Innovation

To improve efficiency, new technologies are making a measurable impact on resource use – for example, high-pressure processing (HPP). Rather than traditional thermal treatment, HPP processes foods at extremely high water pressure to inactivate harmful pathogens. This provides consumers with safer, fresher packaged fruit and vegetable products without additives or preservatives, while also conserving water and turning waste into a valued resource. Unlike thermal treatment where heat is lost after processing, HPP is able to recycle 85% of the water used for the next machine cycle.

Multiple studies assessing the effects of HPP on nutritional components in fruit, vegetable and herb products have suggested that HPP does not adversely alter the products’ chemical and bioactive function of active nutritional constituents, and has little to no effect on sensorial properties.

Generally, automated monitoring systems that use the Internet of Things (IoT) to measure energy or water and monitor production efficiency will positively impact F&B processing. Automatic flags that help reduce downtime and manage resource consumption more effectively will be a critical focus area in 2026 and beyond.

Focus number three: Real-time data analytics

Again, you can’t manage what you can’t see. Take, for example, your home’s energy and water usage: utility bills typically reflect consumption from 6–8 weeks ago. If you notice you’ve used significantly more water than usual, you can’t retroactively fix a leak to lower your bill – the water has already been consumed. To address such issues, you need real-time insights to identify and fix problems as they occur.

This is vital in a food and beverage processing plant. Knowing when production issues arise in real time is essential, both to fix the issue and to understand what happened. Where is the issue? Is it a one-time anomaly or a recurring issue that needs a larger fix? You can’t wait 6–8 weeks to go back and pin down what happened because the context and immediacy are already lost.

To truly advance automation and predictive maintenance, processors need real-time data to adjust operations instantly, whether to reduce food loss, address labor inefficiencies or perform manual intervention on equipment that’s beginning to show maintenance needs.

No 'one size fits all' solution

Fortunately, or unfortunately, there isn’t a single issue across the F&B industry that all processors struggle with. To address food manufacturers’ biggest sustainability concerns – whether related to decarbonisation, water conservation or waste – you must develop a solid understanding of where your greatest opportunities lie. Whether those are unique to your company, shared across the food and beverage value chain, or part of the larger processing industry, understanding your unique opportunities and developing a strategy to realise them is crucial.

No one size fits all when it comes to creating a sustainability plan, but there are benefits to this by allowing you, as an individual organisation, to define sustainability in a way that's meaningful and relevant to your business. You can define where you will have the greatest and most positive impact, then work collaboratively with your value chain to make realistic, measurable changes. This is where processors will see real returns from their efforts towards a more sustainable future.