FDF Q&A: Finding Green Harmony in the Food & Drink Industry

As the world grapples with climate change and biodiversity loss, few sectors face greater pressure to transform than the food and drink industry.

With its vast supply chains, significant environmental footprint and indispensable role in feeding millions, the industry finds itself at the heart of the sustainability challenge.

The Food and Drink Federation (FDF) represents some of the world's largest food and drink manufacturers, retailers and producers.

As such, one of the group's responsibilities is ensuring the industry is resilient enough to withstand the effects of climate change and political instability.

Balwinder Dhoot has been the FDF's Director of Sustainability and Growth for two years now and has overseen a huge amount of progress on this front, recently culminating in the launch of the federation's sustainability strategy, Ambition 2030.

Almost six months on from the launch of Ambition 2030, Sustainability Magazine caught up with Balwinder to see how things have been going.

From tackling complex global supply chains to fostering decades-long relationships between manufacturers and farmers, Balwinder gives us some unique insights into how the sector is adapting to meet urgent environmental challenges – all while making the business case for sustainability crystal clear.

Could you introduce yourself, your role and how you first came to be a sustainability professional?

My name's Balwinder Dhoot. I've been at the FDF for almost exactly two years. My role is Director of Sustainability and Growth.

I look at both those areas as complementary. I think sustainability and growth need to go kind of hand in hand.

Before I came here, I was a civil servant and I worked across a number of departments. Then the last seven years of my civil service career I was focusing on food policy of various types in the Department for Environment

The FDF published its sustainability strategy Ambition 2030 in autumn 2024. How would you describe it and what kind of progress has been made since the launch?

Ambition 2030 took 18 months of work and 18 months of us really thinking through what we need to do as an organisation to push the sustainability agenda and help our members. 

The strategy has five pillars to it: net zero, nature restoration, sustainable commodities, packaging and food waste. 

There are also three levels to each of those pillars for companies with different experience levels with sustainability: Entry, Developing and Advanced.

We work with some huge multinationals at the advanced stage. Britvic does a huge amount on nature restoration, the likes of McCain and Nestlé do huge amounts of regenerative agriculture.

The really difficult bit is helping the companies that are just coming round to it. 

If a company in the first stages of their sustainability journey comes to the FDF, what kind of advice or services do you provide for them?

There's a whole range of things. Firstly, it's about reaching out to businesses to understand what they need. Our job is to engage and explain to them what we can help them on sustainability. 

Our events really help our members. They can come and learn about what others are doing, make contact and get a sense of how others have been on their own journeys. Sharing is really helpful. 

We’re always trying new things to see what helps our members most. Is it a webinar? Is it engagement with one of our professional affiliates who can provide deep technical advice? Is it coaching from another business? Is it guidance on a website? 

We are testing and trialling and we will learn ourselves around how to influence and impact and help businesses go on that journey.

How does the FDF work with government?

There's lots of work being done on sustainability regulations from the government and we need to make sure that we are working with them because the quality of policy that comes out of government will have a direct impact on how successful we are with our strategy. 

That’ll then have an impact on businesses in terms of viability, cost and burdens, which then has an impact on consumers. 

So I would say we share the same sustainability objectives as the government and we need to build and strengthen that partnership with them. 

I think the new food strategy is an opportunity to kind of look at that.

Ministers have talked a lot about co-design and working with business, and that's really welcome.

What kind of work does the FDF do on supply chains?

For our members, we are a critical part of the food system - the middle bit of it, really.

You’ve got the retailers who are interacting with consumers directly and then you've got the producers, the farmers, whether it's in the UK or overseas.

We can't do things in isolation: we need to work across the supply chain. 

We know that for Scope 3, for example, we need to work with the supply chain. When it comes to food waste we'll need to work with the retailers and for packaging we need to work with manufacturers and retailers

Since I've been here, it’s been really positive to see that appetite to work across the supply chain. I can see it improving a lot.

The food and drinks sector has some of the world’s largest supply networks, is that a challenging thing to tackle?

It is obviously a challenge. I think what we need to look at is where there's good practice and where there's good working relationships with supply chains. 

We need to make sure that Scope 3 isn't a responsibility that's piled onto farmers entirely. 

And then, when it comes to overseas sourcing, we need to make sure we have people doing the right thing.

A big part of this is data, so we support the government's Food Data Transparency Partnership.

One of the things that I realised when I first started this job was the complexity around data is in itself a barrier to people achieving the outcomes on net zero. 

Different suppliers and different customers have different data requirements. 

There's multiple different solution providers, but that means there's no consistency. And so if you are supplying into three or four different businesses, they might have different requests.

So having some standards, which is what the Food Data Transparency Partnership is trying to do, is going to be a key part of the solution.

Could you give us a great example of supply chain sustainability?

I think where you see it most is when you get businesses that have a really strong relationship with their farming supply chain.

Those are relationships where they have been built up over many years, sometimes decades.

There's an element of security in those relationships meaning that the farmer knows that they've got a trusted relationship with a customer. 

McCain's is a good example of that, but you see it in others, like ABF, Unilever or Suntory.

These companies can ask farmers to try things, to change practices they might have done for a long time, like when it comes to regenerative agriculture

Knowing that you can do that with a bit of safety, knowing that you can have a bit of a cushion around your income if things don't quite work - that is really helpful.

If you could give one piece of sustainability advice, what would it be?

Think about the business case for sustainability. Why is it commercially the right thing to do? 

It doesn't have to just be a business cost. Whether it's resource efficiency through lower water and energy bills, or using less inputs, or your product will have more penetration in the market there are commercial wins from sustainability.

Thinking about the commercial basis for sustainability is really important.

Explore the latest edition of Sustainability Magazine and be part of the conversation at our global conference series, Sustainability LIVE .

Discover all our upcoming events and secure your tickets today.

Sustainability Magazine is a BizClik brand