IN Brief:
- The study will assess digital maturity across five food manufacturing dimensions.
- Participants will receive personalised assessments and anonymous comparisons with peer organisations.
- The published methodology will determine whether the results support reliable Europe-wide comparisons.
TraceGains has launched a Europe-wide study intended to benchmark digital maturity across food and beverage manufacturing, covering ingredient sourcing, traceability, supplier collaboration, regulatory compliance, operations, and product development.
The European Food & Beverage Digitalization Benchmark 2026 invites operational leaders to assess their organisations across five dimensions. Participants are due to receive an immediate personalised maturity assessment with recommendations, followed by an anonymous comparison with peer businesses after the survey closes.
TraceGains said the aggregated report will identify common obstacles, investment priorities, and emerging trends among quality, compliance, procurement, regulatory affairs, operations, and product development teams. Individual company data will remain confidential, according to the supplied launch material.
The company describes the initiative as independent and aims to establish it as an annual measure. The release does not identify an external research partner, sample target, weighting method, response verification process, or minimum representation by country, company size, and manufacturing category.
Those details will determine whether the final findings can support comparisons across Europe’s varied food manufacturing base or primarily describe the organisations that choose to participate. A large response count alone does not remove self-selection, sector concentration, or differences in regulatory exposure.
Bal Chand, European Marketing Manager at TraceGains, said: “Food and beverage manufacturers are being asked to do more, faster, and with greater evidence behind every decision, from sourcing and compliance through to product development and customer response. But many teams are still working across disconnected processes, manual data requests and systems that make it harder to keep pace.”
The benchmark follows a separate TraceGains study of more than 400 food and beverage professionals. That work identified disconnected systems and data as the largest barrier to faster operations for 40% of respondents, alongside concerns around traceability, compliance, operational efficiency, and the controlled use of artificial intelligence.
The Europe-specific exercise arrives as manufacturers prepare for several data-intensive regulatory changes. The EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation generally applies from 12 August 2026, while the EU Deforestation Regulation is due to apply from 30 December 2026 for large and medium operators and from 30 June 2027 for most micro and small operators.
Digital Product Passports require more careful treatment than a single cross-industry deadline suggests. The framework is being introduced through product-specific EU rules, so food, packaging, equipment, and other regulated groups will not necessarily face identical data requirements at the same time.
The operational burden extends beyond collecting additional fields. Ingredient specifications, supplier approvals, certificates, formulations, allergens, packaging records, audit evidence, customer requirements, and product claims are often owned by different teams and updated at different intervals.
A supplier or formulation change can therefore move through procurement, quality, regulatory, labelling, and product development systems before a finished specification is approved. Disconnected spreadsheets and email requests can support modest volumes, but the process becomes brittle as product ranges, suppliers, markets, and evidence requirements expand.
Delays appear in duplicated checks, incomplete records, version conflicts, and the time needed to assemble proof for customers or regulators. Software only removes those problems when data ownership, validation, permissions, and change control are designed alongside the technology.
TraceGains has been extending its connected data and development portfolio, including Formula AI, which combines formulation, supplier, ingredient, and compliance information within a product development environment. The benchmark gives the company a route to compare how European manufacturers organise similar processes.
Confidentiality will influence participation because respondents are being invited to expose weaknesses in compliance, traceability, supplier data, and operational controls. The usefulness of each personalised assessment will also depend on whether the scoring distinguishes between companies with different product risks, manufacturing complexity, and regulatory obligations.
A maturity score can otherwise reward the quantity of software rather than the quality of control. A business with fewer connected systems may still manage approvals and traceability effectively, while a heavily digitised operation can reproduce weak data governance at greater speed. The benchmark will need to separate technology adoption from measurable process performance.
FoodDrinkEurope estimates that the EU food and drink industry employs about 4.8 million people and generates approximately €1.5 trillion in turnover. A credible annual benchmark across that scale will require transparent segmentation and a stable methodology that can be repeated without changing the basis of comparison.
The first report will show whether the exercise moves beyond familiar complaints about spreadsheets and disconnected systems to identify controls that are producing measurable gains in approval time, traceability, compliance evidence, supplier collaboration, and product development.
