Food, in brief

Lindt & Spruengli, the Swiss company that makes Lindor truffles and Ghirardelli chocolate, cut its sales forecast for 2026 on Tuesday. [1][2]

It now expects sales to grow by 0% to 2% this year, leaving out currency swings and companies it bought, down from 4% to 6%. It was its second cut this year. [1][3]

Its chief executive, Adalbert Lechner, said years of very high cocoa prices had forced Lindt to raise its own prices. [1]

He said those price rises and gloomy shoppers meant shops in some European countries ordered less than expected, above all of seasonal chocolate. [1]

Europe's record summer heatwave also cut how much chocolate people ate, across the whole industry. [1][2]

Lindt now plans to lower the prices of its chocolate. [4]

Sales held up well in North America and Asia. [2]

The same week, Lindt launched its Christmas range, from advent calendars to chocolate teddies, aimed at shoppers who spend more on gifts. [5]

Lindt still expects the share of each sale it keeps as operating profit to rise by 0.2 to 0.4 percentage points this year. [1][2]

Its shares fell 8.7% on Tuesday, the biggest fall on the STOXX 600, an index of Europe's large companies. [3]

Cocoa prices have started to ease, and Lindt expects its costs to settle over the coming months. [2]

Some ingredient firms now sell chocolate flavours that need less cocoa. DSM-Firmenich says its CocoaCraze range was built for exactly that. [6]

Why it matters. Watch whether lower Lindt prices bring back the European shoppers who bought less this year, which Lindt says should show up as more chocolate sold in 2027. [1][4]

Namibia confirmed foot-and-mouth disease, a disease of farm animals, on 23 September in Karasburg, an area in the south that had been free of it. [7] Ten of 11 samples tested positive and 63 cattle were affected. [7] Namibia banned livestock trade and slaughter nationwide, and the world animal health body withdrew the south's disease-free status. [7] That stopped exports to China, South Africa and the United States. [7] Once the outbreak was found only in the Kharas region, restrictions north of Namibia's disease fence were partly lifted. [7]

Why it matters. Livestock is about 3.1% of Namibia's economy, and the US farm agency's report puts the cost at up to 12,000 lost years of work in 2026-27. [7] Pig slaughter and trade remain stopped nationwide, causing pork shortages and price spikes. [7]

Believer Meats grew meat from animal cells in tanks called bioreactors, and stopped work in December. [8] Its two main creditors, the builder Gray Construction and Ameris Bank, are weighing a joint bid for its $150m plant in Wilson, North Carolina. [8] They would pay partly with the debt Believer owes them: Gray says it is owed $36.4m, and Ameris lent $25m. [8] UPSIDE Foods, another lab-grown meat firm, dropped its $50m offer for the plant in August. [8]

Why it matters. Believer raised almost $400m, including from the investment arms of the food giants ADM and Tyson. [8] The court-appointed manager says the creditors will not keep paying to run the empty plant for much longer, and any sale still needs a court's approval. [8]

Pladis, the British company behind McVitie's biscuits and Godiva chocolate, has just published its results for 2025. [9] Sales rose 1.2% to 3.3 billion pounds. [9] Operating profit, what is left from sales after the costs of running the business, fell 12.4% to 301.6 million pounds. [9] Pladis blamed dearer raw ingredients, swings in exchange rates and a weak economy, and called 2025 a demanding year for the food industry. [9]

Why it matters. Nine-tenths of Pladis' sales are its own brands, which sell at a higher price than supermarket own-label packs. [9] It sells in more than 110 countries and is expanding McVitie's in China. [9]

Britain's Advertising Standards Authority, which polices adverts, banned an Instagram and YouTube advert for Huel, a maker of meal-replacement shakes. [10] In it, the TV personality Spencer Matthews told of a man in an ultramarathon who only ate Huel and won by miles. [10] The watchdog said viewers could take this to mean living only on Huel was healthy and fine for top athletes. [10][11] It also noted a serving gives up to 400 calories, so one per meal falls short of the 2,000 to 2,500 a day recommended in the UK. [11]

Why it matters. Huel said the story was told as a surprise, not as advice, and that it has complied with the ruling. [10] It is not the first time the watchdog has ruled against Huel for suggesting its products could replace ordinary food. [10]

ArkeaBio, a Boston start-up making a vaccine to cut the methane cows burp out, raised $15m in a round led by AgriZeroNZ. [12] It also let go about a third of its staff, to focus on its first market, New Zealand, and its first sales. [12] The vaccine makes a cow's immune system work against the gut microbes that turn hydrogen into methane. [12] Its first product aims to cut methane by 10-15% and would be given every three months. [12]

Why it matters. Methane is a powerful heat-trapping gas, and on farms it comes from manure and from cattle burping. [12] A feed additive called Bovaer promises a 30% cut in milking cows, and ArkeaBio expects to apply to New Zealand's regulators next year. [12]

Farmers Business Network (FBN), a US online marketplace where farmers buy seed and supplies, borrow money and sell grain, announced a partnership with Google's AI Futures Fund this week. [13] They will build what they call an AI context engine, one constantly updated picture of a farm's soil, crops, money, machines and markets. [13] FBN gets early access to Google's newest AI models to test them on farm work. [13] Early test users get the first features now, and a wider rollout is due this autumn. [13]

Why it matters. FBN's cofounder Charles Baron says today's AI gives farmers general advice that does not connect to buying or selling anything. [13] He says Google will have no access to farms' data, which FBN keeps. [13]

Investors put $3bn into new farm and food technology companies from April to June, against $12.1bn at the 2022 peak, according to DigitalFoodLab, which tracks the deals. [14] Every quarter for about two years has landed between $2.5bn and $3.5bn. [14] PitchBook, another tracker, counted 107 farm-technology deals and 142 food-technology deals in the quarter, both the fewest in eight years. [14] The figures come from an article by two investors at Peakbridge, a venture firm. [14]

Why it matters. The same authors say buyers still pay well for nutrition firms that can prove their products work. [14] Procter & Gamble paid $3.8bn for Thorne, a vitamin maker that runs clinical studies, close to eight times its yearly sales. [14]

FOOD FOUNDERS Studio, a Swiss firm that builds food-technology start-ups around problems big food makers already have, raised 4 million euros ($4.5m). [15] The money came from the private investment offices of wealthy families and from individual investors, and will build its next two companies. [15] Its first, SentiaNova, removes the off flavours in proteins made from pulses, the crop family that includes peas and lentils. [15] It is staying away from costly areas with long approval times, such as lab-grown meat and fermentation. [15]

Why it matters. Cofounder Giacomo Cattaneo says big food companies have cut their own research budgets, so new ideas have to come from outside. [15] He says the studio wants to be fast and to work on what the industry needs now. [15]

Plantik Biosciences, a start-up based in France, and Hudson River Biotechnology, a gene-editing company, are working together on strawberries that keep fruiting in high heat. [16] Heat stops strawberry flowers turning into fruit and harms the fruit's quality. [16] Plantik found the DNA switches for heat tolerance in tomatoes, and Hudson River will make matching edits in strawberries without adding DNA from other species. [16] Trials to check the trait are under way. [16]

Why it matters. The aim is a heat-tolerance trait any strawberry breeder can license, since most cannot afford gene editing themselves. [16] Hudson River says new EU rules that make gene-edited crops easier to approve brought a surge of interest, and AgFunder, whose news site reported this, has invested in Plantik. [16]

Pumpkin growers in southern England say this summer's drought left their pumpkins smaller and ripening early. [17] Summer 2026 was the UK's hottest on record, with 40 days above 30C against the old record of 34. [17] Eleanor Gilbert, whose family farms on the Hampshire-Berkshire border, said her pumpkins were 50-60% down. [17] A grower near the Oxford Canal who sells to restaurants said his crop came in at half what he expected. [17]

Why it matters. Pumpkins are about 90% water, so a dry summer stops them growing. [17] Martin Emmett, who chairs a growers' board for vegetables and potatoes, says there will still be plenty of British pumpkins in the shops for carving. [17]

Big ingredient makers told FoodNavigator, a food trade news site, how this summer's European heatwave is changing where they buy. [6] Tate & Lyle, an ingredients firm, said it spread its maize buying across more regions after France's 2022 drought, so it was better prepared for this year's poor French harvest. [6] In Britain, shops and restaurants had to buy iceberg lettuce and broccoli from Spain and the Netherlands in the middle of the home growing season. [6] Kerry, another ingredients firm, said climate events now hit cocoa, sugar, coconuts and grains. [6]

Why it matters. The firms admit a second supplier helps little if the same heatwave hits both. [6] Farmers in the worst-hit places risk losing their buyers, and Ronald Guendel, who leads an international farm-business association, says food firms should help them adapt instead. [6]

Ahold Delhaize, which owns supermarket chains in Europe and the US serving 77 million customers a week, surveyed 8,000 shoppers in seven countries. [18] It found 92% want to eat more healthily, but only 14% think their diet is very healthy. [18] Only 13% feel very confident telling healthy food from unhealthy food. [18] Shoppers said cheaper healthy food would do most to change what they buy. [18]

Why it matters. The UK government plans to make large food companies report how much healthy food they sell, and to set targets for it. [18] Eighteen companies disclosed such figures or set targets in 2026, up from seven in 2024, the report says. [18]

Misfits Market, a US online grocer founded in 2018 to sell misshapen fruit and vegetables, now earns much of its money from packaged food. [19] It buys goods ordinary shops will not take, such as products with only months left before they expire, or in old packaging, and sells them at a steep discount. [19] Its founder, Abhi Ramesh, said packaged goods make up 50-60% of most orders. [19] Its service storing and delivering other brands' chilled food has grown 50-fold since 2024. [19]

Why it matters. Ramesh says the grocery and the delivery service each bring in nine-figure revenue, meaning at least $100m. [19] Both run on about 750,000 square feet of chilled and frozen warehouses. [19]

Hershey, the US chocolate maker, launched two new Reese's products: a Caramel Block and a White Peanut Butter Cup Trio. [20] Reese's peanut-butter cups are among its best-known sweets. [20] The launch follows the first new Reese's Pieces sweet in a decade, which came out in July. [20] The food trade press says sweet makers are stretching familiar brands instead of starting new ones, because shoppers are choosier about treats. [20]

Why it matters. Lindt is answering cautious shoppers with lower prices. [4] Hershey is answering them with new bars under a name they already trust. [20]

Nestle, the world's biggest food company, launched Starbucks Refreshers Concentrates, fruit-flavoured caffeine drinks that people mix at home with water, milk or lemonade. [14][21] Nestle sells Starbucks products in nearly 80 countries under a deal made in 2018. [21] In Starbucks cafes, Refreshers have grown into a $2bn brand, second only to espresso drinks. [21] Flavours include strawberry acai and mango dragonfruit. [21]

Why it matters. Younger shoppers increasingly want caffeine drinks that do not taste of coffee, the trade press reports. [21] It is a crowded market, with Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Red Bull and Monster all selling cold caffeine drinks. [21]

At a Climate Week panel in New York, Nestle said greenhouse gas emissions from its dairy supply chain are down 26% since 2018, and methane down 25%. [22] Farmers on the panel said they lack the money to change how they farm. [22] Austin Allred, who runs a 7,000-cow dairy in Washington state, said farm investments must pay back within days or weeks. [22] California Dairies, a co-operative of nearly 300 farms, supplies Nestle with milk. [22]

Why it matters. Big food firms want lower emissions from the milk they buy, and the cost of changing falls first on the farms. [22] Louis Dreyfus, a global crop processing company, has worked with Nestle since 2024 to help Argentine farmers grow soy and maize for cow feed with methods that cut emissions. [22]