Food and beverage firms in China are increasingly viewing climate resilience as a business opportunity, rather than just a compliance issue, a new report by Lumina Intelligence has suggested.
According to the Climate-Smart Resilience Report 2026, some 53% of decision-makers across Chinese food, beverage, ingredient and FMCG firms are investing more in climate-smart initiatives than they did three years ago, with 13% saying that they are investing ‘significantly more’.
Among the initiatives being adopted by Chinese decision-makers are regenerative agriculture, water stewardship, biological crop inputs and carbon reporting.
Climate resilience
Notably, not a single respondent in China cited regulatory compliance as their primary motivation for sustainable investment – indicating a ‘growing divergence’ in how different regions frame the climate threat, according to Lumina Intelligence.
Instead, close to half (47%) of Chinese respondents viewed climate resilience as a business risk management issue, while one in five (20%) considered it a driver of innovation and growth.
In addition, internal drivers such as corporate commitments (50%) and investor expectations (37%) ‘dominate’ sustainability strategies in China, with 10% having embedded climate resilience into their core corporate strategy. This compares to a global average of close to 6%.
“What we are seeing in the data is part of a much broader geopolitical shift,” commented Katie Gallagher, insight lead at Lumina Intelligence. “Just as China moved decisively to capture leadership in electric vehicles and green energy, its food sector is now positioning climate resilience not as a regulatory burden, but as an essential competitive strategy.
“While western businesses are more hesitant over immediate payback periods, Chinese leaders are building supply-chain strength that looks better placed to build climate-smart resilience over the next decade.”
European investment trends
Closer to home, investment trends across Europe were more mixed. Germany recorded 52% of respondents investing more in climate resilience initiatives, while Spain recorded 48%.
Lumina Intelligence’s research also found that larger European businesses were less likely to have increased spend on climate resilience initiatives – among companies employing between 5,000 and 9,999 people, 62% reported no change in climate resilience investment over the previous three years – while close to three fifths executives cited a lack of clear return-on-investment data as their primary barrier to action.
Lumina Intelligence added that the report concludes that ‘unlocking further capital will require a fundamental overhaul of how the global sector values, finances, and measures agricultural resilience’. Read more here.
