Fi Europe has long been a pulse check for where the global food and nutrition industry is heading. This year in Paris, the scale and energy of the event once again reflected an industry navigating the growing complexity of regulatory expectations, sustainability pressures and the demand for faster, more transparent collaboration across supply chains.
With food and beverage manufacturers, nutrition brands, ingredient suppliers, and technology providers converging under one roof, Fi Europe 2025 reinforced several clear signals about what will matter most in the year ahead.
An industry under pressure and opportunity
Across the exhibition halls, one message was unmistakable: innovation in food and nutrition is accelerating, but so is the operational burden behind it.
Manufacturers are expected to move faster, respond to more stakeholders, and prove more claims; all while managing fragmented data spread across internal teams, suppliers, and legacy systems. Fi Europe continues to highlight this tension between innovation on the front end and complexity behind the scenes.
Transparency is no longer a differentiator
Clean-label expectations have evolved far beyond ingredient lists. Today’s buyers, partners, and regulators are asking deeper questions around sourcing, processing methods, certifications, and traceability.
Fi Europe 2025 reflected this shift clearly. Transparency is no longer something brands can treat as a competitive advantage. In fact, it is the minimum requirement for doing business in many categories, especially in nutrition and functional foods. What’s changing is not just what information is required, but how quickly and confidently it needs to be delivered.
Functionality demands proof
Functional nutrition continues to be a major driver of product development. But alongside this growth comes increased scrutiny. Because functional claims now demand stronger scientific backing, clearer documentation, and consistent data across regulatory, commercial, and customer-facing touchpoints.
Fi Europe reinforced the reality that functionality without evidence is no longer sufficient. The brands that succeed will be those that can align R&D, regulatory, and commercial teams around a single, trusted view of product information.
Sustainability has shifted from storytelling to systems
Sustainability was present throughout the event in matured conversations. Rather than high-level claims, the focus has shifted toward measurable impact, structured ESG reporting, supplier validation, and auditable data. Now, regenerative practices, emissions tracking, and responsible sourcing are increasingly tied to formal documentation and ongoing data maintenance.
For food and beverage manufacturers, this creates a new operational challenge: sustainability touches procurement, quality, compliance, and external communications simultaneously, unlike being a one-team, one-report function it used to be.
The hidden bottleneck: fragmented data and rising RFIs
One of the clearest undercurrents at Fi Europe 2025 was the growing strain caused by fragmented information. And the other, less talked about, bottleneck is the surge in volume of supplier, audit, sustainability questionnaires, customer compliance requests, and other RFIs that depend on that information.
Product specifications, certificates, policies, audit responses, ESG metrics, and customer questionnaires often live across disconnected systems and teams. As regulatory and customer demands increase, this fragmentation becomes a bottleneck that slows responses, increases risk, and consumes valuable team bandwidth.
And in many organisations, it is QA and compliance teams that feel this pressure first. These teams are increasingly bombarded with questionnaires, each requesting overlapping but slightly different information, across multiple formats, timeframes, and customer requirements. Even when the answers already exist, they may not be easy to locate, validate, or standardise quickly.
This is where many organisations are now refocusing: not just on innovation, but on building cleaner, more reliable data foundations that allow innovation to scale, while enabling faster, more consistent responses to information requests and questionnaires.
Where RightOrigins fits into the picture
At RightOrigins, these industry signals closely align with the problems we’re helping organisations solve.
As an agentic AI platform, RightOrigins transforms messy, fragmented supply chain and compliance data into trusted, ready-to-use intelligence. By connecting directly to the systems where product information, certificates, specifications, and reports already live, we help teams maintain a single source of truth that’s accurate, version-clean, and audit-ready.
Additionally, from automating repetitive workflows like RFI and questionnaire responses, to supporting product specification generation, and more, our focus is on reducing friction behind the scenes so teams can move faster with confidence.
And the more we discussed this at Fi Europe, the clearer the pattern became: that forward-thinking teams are already investing in this kind of operational clarity. Lehvoss Group, for example, a leading speciality manufacturer in Europe, is already organising critical product and compliance information so it can be used consistently across teams and stakeholder needs.
In fact, this commitment extended beyond internal systems. The Lehvoss team actively accompanied us in multiple discussions, bringing a new level of confidence and depth to those discussions. Having a customer share their real-world experience and live testimonial in the moment was genuinely priceless.
Fi Europe 2025 made one thing clear: the future of food and nutrition innovation depends as much on data readiness and operational clarity as it does on new ingredients or formulations.
Looking ahead
As the industry moves into 2026, the direction is clear. Transparency, functionality, and sustainability will continue to shape decision-making. But success will depend on how well organisations manage the complexity behind these priorities, and Fi Europe remains a valuable checkpoint for these shifts.
About Fi Europe
Fi Europe is the leading global trade event for food and beverage ingredients, bringing together manufacturers, suppliers, and innovators from across the industry.