London Climate Action Week 2026

Future-Proofing Food Infrastructure 

Climate Risk, Operational Resilience & Business Continuity Across Food & Beverage

In-person event

Date:
Tuesday 23rd June 2026,
5pm - 7pm

Venue location:
Mitie PLC, The Shard,

32 London Bridge Street,

London SE1 9SG

The food and beverage industry is entering a new era of climate exposure 

Flooding, overheating, water stress, energy disruption and infrastructure vulnerability are no longer future sustainability concerns. They are becoming immediate operational and commercial risks affecting manufacturing sites, logistics networks, depots, estates, workforce continuity and long-term business resilience. 

At the same time, regulatory expectations, investor scrutiny and disclosure requirements around physical climate risk are accelerating rapidly, placing increasing pressure on organisations to demonstrate not only awareness of climate exposure, but credible resilience and adaptation planning. 

How prepared is the infrastructure underpinning the food system for a more volatile climate future? 

During London Climate Action Week, Future Food Movement, Mitie and Climate X are bringing together a curated group of senior leaders from across the food and beverage sector for an evening focused on one of the most urgent and commercially significant challenges facing the industry. 

Curated by Future Food Movement, this gathering will explore how organisations can better understand physical climate exposure across estates, assets and operations, and how businesses move from risk awareness into practical resilience planning, investment prioritisation and operational action. 

The evening will combine strategic industry insight, expert perspectives and peer discussion, creating space for more candid cross-sector conversation around the operational realities and business implications of climate disruption. 

The event will also highlight the emerging partnership between Mitie and Climate X, combining climate risk analytics with operational delivery expertise to help organisations identify vulnerabilities, prioritise resilience action and strengthen long-term business continuity planning. 

Why this conversation matters now 

Climate resilience is rapidly becoming a core business issue for the food industry. 

Across manufacturing, logistics, retail and operational estates, organisations are increasingly being forced to confront critical questions: 

  • Which sites and operations are most vulnerable to climate disruption? 

  • Where does physical infrastructure risk create commercial exposure? 

  • How should businesses prioritise resilience investment? 

  • What does credible adaptation planning now look like? 

  • How do organisations move beyond reporting and disclosure into practical action?

For many businesses, the challenge is no longer whether climate disruption will affect operations, but whether resilience planning is keeping pace with the scale and speed of emerging risk. 

Places are limited. Register your interest to request a place on the guest list.

Register here

Meet the speakers

Helen Ireland
Strategy & Transformation Director,
Future Food Movement

  • With a career spanning some of the UK’s best-known food and drink brands, Helen brings deep expertise in embedding sustainability into commercial strategy. She supports businesses at every stage of their journey - building cross-functional capability, unlocking organisational momentum and designing climate-positive roadmaps that stick. Before joining Future Food Movement, Helen led transformational sustainability work at Sainsbury’s, Costa Coffee and Cafédirect, integrating ESG into finance, strategy, product, brand and supply chains. She’s passionate about collaborative learning, systems thinking and empowering teams to move from intent to action - ensuring sustainability becomes everyone’s business, not just a function.

First name, Last name
Job title,
Mitie

  • Bio coming soon.

Grace Thomson
Head of Strategic Alliances & Partnerships

Climate X

  • Grace leads partnerships at Climate X. Focused on the critical challenge of climate physical risk, she works with consultancies across sectors to help organisations understand their exposure to climate hazards and build robust resilience strategies.

    Her work sits at the intersection of climate science and business strategy — translating complex risk data into frameworks that clients can act on with confidence. Whether engaging financial services firms assessing asset exposure or infrastructure teams stress-testing supply chains against future climate scenarios, she is focused on making climate risk tangible and the path to resilience clear. By partnering closely with consultancies, she extends that impact at scale — equipping advisors with the tools and insight they need to guide their clients through one of the defining challenges of our time

Nigel Murray
CEO,
Booths

  • Nigel joined Booths in November 2015 having spent his career to date in the food retail sector with Safeway, Tetley, Asda and Greggs.

    Within Booths Nigel is a member of the Board and leads the Executive team. He is also a member of DEFRA’s Food and Drink Sector Council, a Trustee of The Creative Health Trust UK and is a Marketing Lancashire Ambassador.

    Nigel is a firm believer in and proponent of ‘wholesome localism’ – a state where good quality, healthy and nutritious food and drink can be produced nearer to the point of sale and consumption, supporting local communities, economies and the health of the planet.

    Any spare time is spent watching his son play football, enjoying food, but most of all cycling….reading, watching, fixing and actually cycling! In 2021 he completed the Tour de France route (21 stages) as one of a team of 18 amateur cyclists to raise over £1m for the charity, Cure Leukaemia.

Emily Norton
Chair,
AHDB

  • Emily Norton ARAgS is a Norfolk farmer and founder of Farm Foresight Ltd, a strategic advisory service for the rural sector. 

    Emily has 25 years experience in food, farming and land use systems. She originally qualified as lawyer before undertaking an MSc in Sustainable Agriculture. Her career has taken her from family business to global PLC, with time spent in Brussels and across the UK. Emily has particular expertise in natural capital influences on land, food and farming.

    Emily holds various non-executive board positions in the agricultural sector including as Chair of the AHDB, and as a NED at Soil Association Exchange and the Environmental Markets Board. She is a trustee at the Royal Norfolk Agricultural Association. She is a well known media commentator and lives and farms in Norfolk. 

    Current Appointments:

    • Farm Foresight Ltd, owner and founder 

    • P,R&E Norton, partner (family farm)

    • AHDB, Chair 

    • Environmental Markets Board, board member

    • Soil Association Exchange, non-executive Director

    • Duchy of Lancaster, Rural Committee, member 

    • Royal Norfolk Agricultural Association, trustee 

Fiona Graham
COO,
Family Business UK

  • Fiona is a passionate advocate for the family business sector.  She has spent over a decade working with family businesses ensuring that politicians and policymakers understand businesses operating in the sector, and their needs are reflected in policy and regulation affecting family businesses.  

    Fiona is regularly invited to join Government taskforces and working groups, having sat on the SME Advisory Board, Mid-Sized Business Forum and the Occupational Health Taskforce amongst others. Her career started in politics and policy, including time working in the Scottish Parliament, Scottish Government and leading public affairs agencies.

What to expect:

5:30pm — Welcome and industry context 


5:40pm — Expert panel discussion 


6:20pm — Facilitated peer discussion and networking 


7:00pm — Close 

Who should attend:

This event is designed for senior leaders across:

  • Food and beverage manufacturing 

  • Retail and distribution 

  • Supply chain and logistics 

  • Property and estates 

  • Operations and facilities 

  • Sustainability and ESG 

  • Risk and resilience 

  • Infrastructure and capital planning 

  • Investment and finance 

Attendance is limited to maintain a high-quality, senior peer environment. 

Register Your Interest

Places are limited. Register your interest to be considered for the guest list.

About the Partners

Future Food Movement is a leadership platform and strategic partner helping organisations navigate the growing complexity shaping the future of the food system. Through senior convening, cross-sector insight and capability development, FFM supports leaders to turn volatility, risk and system change into more confident action and decision-making. 

Mitie is a leading facilities transformation company supporting organisations to operate more resilient, efficient and future-ready estates and infrastructure. Through its climate risk and resilience capabilities, Mitie helps businesses translate climate exposure insight into practical operational planning and action.

Climate X provides advanced climate risk analytics and location intelligence, helping organisations understand and quantify physical climate exposure across assets, operations and infrastructure to support better resilience planning and investment decisions.

The reason I’m here? Because Future Food Movement isn’t just talking about change - it’s creating the conditions for it.

Dr Clive Black
Shore Capital