With Europe recently gripped by soaring temperatures, a timely piece from FoodNavigator digs into what heatwaves actually mean for food manufacturers — and the answer is more nuanced than you might expect. While cold chain systems do have to work harder (think higher energy costs and tighter operating margins), spoilage risk is generally lower than feared. Most ambient products — dry pasta, cereals, canned goods — handle heat far better than people assume, and modern distribution centres are built to manage it. The real pressure points? Demand spikes and supply chain resilience. Categories like ice cream ramp up months in advance, using weather forecasts to fine-tune stock deployment. But when social media virality collides with a heatwave, traditional forecasting can fall short fast. The key takeaway from procurement experts: it's less about product risk and more about system resilience — securing capacity early, staying close to suppliers, and building in flexibility before temperatures climb.

Read more about it here!