Welcome to this week’s Food Exec Brief, your strategic intelligence roundup for food and beverage manufacturing leaders. This week, we’re covering:
- JBS is closing two plants with 2,000+ jobs as North American beef losses deepen, Kraft Heinz is reorganizing into three global regions, and Campbell’s completed a 20% capacity expansion at its North Carolina facility while Mars hit 100% renewable electricity across all US operations.
- The US-Iran peace deal was signed, but food costs won’t recover quickly. ISM’s spring forecast puts manufacturing revenue growth at 8.4% for 2026 with raw material prices up 14.1%. Congress introduced legislation to ban PFAS, BPA, and phthalates from food packaging, and Nestlé USA finished removing all certified artificial colors from its US portfolio.
- 91% of large CPG R&D labs are using AI, but only 19% have embedded it into routine workflows. Unilever is scaling 40+ manufacturing digital twins, and AI-generated contamination images are already landing in food company complaint queues.
Beef losses push JBS to close two plants, and Kraft Heinz reorganizes into three regions
JBS USA is closing its beef production facility in Souderton, Pennsylvania, with approximately 1,700 employees and 2,000 head per day in processing capacity, and a value-added facility in Memphis with about 200 workers, affecting roughly 2,000 total jobs. The closures follow a $279 million adjusted operating loss in North American beef in the first quarter of 2026, up from a $158 million loss the prior year. Separately, JBS-owned Pilgrim’s Pride is investing $75 million to expand a poultry facility in Ellijay, Georgia, shifting chicken production from Chattanooga and laying off 348 workers there. (Learn more)
Kraft Heinz is consolidating its global operations into three regions effective July 1, combining its procurement and supply chain functions under a single officer, and cutting senior leadership positions as CEO Steve Cahillane continues restructuring the company. Q1 net income rose to $799 million from $714 million a year earlier, with net sales up 0.8% to $6.05 billion. (Learn more)
Why it matters: Every major US beef processor is pulling capacity right now, and the Kraft Heinz restructuring is a direct test of whether operational changes can reverse a prolonged sales decline.
Campbell’s expands to meet soup and broth demand, and Mars powers all US plants on renewable electricity
Campbell’s completed an 88,000-square-foot expansion plus an additional 28,000 square feet of mezzanine space at its Maxton, North Carolina facility, increasing soup and broth production capacity by 20% and adding more than 100 jobs. The ribbon cutting was June 11. Growing demand for bone broth, at-home cooking, and health-oriented options drove the decision. The Maxton facility has been part of Campbell’s network since 1979. (Learn more)
Mars announced that all US operations, factories, offices, veterinary hospitals, and diagnostic labs, are now powered by 100% renewable electricity, alongside the release of its 2025 Sustainable in a Generation Report. Mars reduced Scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions 42.6% against a 2015 baseline and cut full value chain emissions 6.4% in 2025, its largest annual reduction to date, while growing the business approximately 75%. The company also announced plans to invest $2 billion in US manufacturing and €1 billion in EU operations by the end of 2026, alongside a new Mars Sustainability Investment Fund with up to $250 million in committed capital. (Learn more)
Why it matters: Campbell’s expansion is a direct bet on continued soup and broth demand growth, and Mars’s renewable milestone confirms that full decarbonization across US food manufacturing operations is achievable at scale.
The Iran peace deal was signed, and food costs are a different timeline
A US-Iran agreement to end the war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz was scheduled for signing in Switzerland Friday, but analysts say food prices are unlikely to fall significantly in the near term. Stephen Butler, CCO of commodity platform ChAI, pointed to two reasons: most major food manufacturers have supply contracts locked in for six to twelve months, insulating them from spot price relief. More durably, drone strikes on gas infrastructure across the region will take years to repair, keeping energy input costs for food production elevated regardless of strait status. Plastics and packaging costs are expected to fall faster than food ingredient prices as oil markets respond. (Learn more)
ISM’s Spring 2026 Supply Chain Planning Forecast shows manufacturing revenues expected to increase 8.4% for the year, up from a 4.4% forecast in December, with raw material prices already up 11.9% through June and projected to hit 14.1% by year end. Most (97% of) manufacturers project full-year price increases. Food, Beverage & Tobacco Products is among the 14 manufacturing industries projecting both revenue growth and capital expenditure increases. One shift worth noting: 49% of manufacturers are now requiring lower inventory levels, compared to just 17% in May 2025. (Learn more)
Why it matters: The peace deal removes the worst-case supply chain scenario, but the cost recovery will be gradual and will land differently depending on whether you’re buying plastic packaging or agricultural inputs.
Congress goes after chemicals in food packaging, and Nestlé finishes its synthetic dye exit
Congressional Democrats introduced the No Toxics in Food Packaging Act, which would ban PFAS, BPA, phthalates, styrene polymers, acrylamide, formaldehyde, and several other substances from food packaging and food processing materials. The bill requires that banned substances not be replaced by similarly problematic alternatives and does not preempt state laws already in effect. PFAS packaging bans in Illinois and Maine took effect this year. The FDA is separately conducting a postmarket safety assessment of phthalates currently authorized for food-contact use. (Learn more)
Nestlé USA completed the removal of all certified artificial colors from its entire US food and beverage portfolio, meeting a mid-2026 commitment announced in June 2025. Nestlé USA CEO Marty Thompson noted the Nesquik team reformulated strawberry offerings using natural color sources and the foodservice team transitioned more than 20 Nestlé Vitality beverage products to natural color sources in five months, without compromising quality. General Mills, Kraft Heinz, and Campbell’s made similar pledges. (Learn more)
Why it matters: A federal legislative push and an FDA regulatory review are both targeting food contact materials while manufacturers are already mid-reformulation on dyes, stacking complexity onto packaging decisions that extend well into 2027.
AI is in every CPG lab but struggling to get past chatbots, and Unilever is betting on digital twins
A Turing Labs survey of 290 senior R&D executives at companies with 1,000 or more employees found that 91% are using AI at work, but only 19% have embedded it into routine workflows. More than half said GenAI formulation outputs were too generic to use without significant rework; 20% of AI initiatives were never implemented; and 52% of launched products required reformulation within 12 months. The deeper issue, per Turing Labs: CPG innovation has become “structurally defensive,” with most R&D capacity directed at protecting existing products rather than building new ones. (Learn more)
Unilever is partnering with Accenture to build more than 40 manufacturing digital twins across its global network over the next 18 months, with each twin designed to learn and make operational adjustments automatically under human oversight. Existing deployments have delivered concrete results: a Raeford, North Carolina plant achieved a 20% reduction in waste and 10% uplift in capacity on deodorant stick production, while a Poznan, Poland plant making Knorr and Hellmann’s products cut minor stoppages by up to 20% and reduced waste by nearly 30%. (Learn more)
Why it matters: Most CPG companies are still using AI to speed up what they already do; Unilever’s numbers suggest the bigger return comes from rebuilding production processes around it.
AI-generated fraud images are hitting complaint queues, and AI is also compressing reformulation timelines
UK food safety consultancy Food Alert says it is already handling cases involving AI-generated contamination images and AI-written complaints designed to secure refunds or trigger regulatory inspections. More than 34 million AI-generated images are produced daily, and consumer studies show 73% of participants cannot identify an AI-generated pizza and 69% fail to spot an AI-generated pasta dish. Only 38% of AI image generators implement adequate watermarking, per arXiv research. Existing food fraud legislation was not written to address synthetic images, leaving a regulatory gap that may take years to close. (Learn more)
On the production side, AI is also cutting down the time and rework burden of reformulation. A medium-sized food company managing 5,000 SKUs with 30 ingredients per formula carries roughly 150,000 ingredient-formula relationships, a volume that spreadsheet-based systems cannot reliably maintain. AI tools that connect regulatory rules, supplier specs, and formula history in real time can reduce compliance and claims validation time by 70 to 90% by surfacing issues during development rather than after launch. The prerequisite stays the same: accurate, connected ingredient data, which most facilities are still working to build. (Learn more)
Why it matters: AI is opening new vulnerabilities in complaint management at the same time it’s cutting weeks out of product development, and the manufacturers best positioned on both fronts are the ones who have already invested in data quality.
The Food Exec Brief provides weekly insights for food and beverage manufacturing leaders and publishes every Friday.
