Manufacturers commit to healthy food sales reporting

The Food and Drink Federation has brought together five major manufacturers that will begin publishing healthy food sales data from 2027, giving government and industry an early test of a reporting model intended to become mandatory for large food businesses.

Carlsberg Britvic, Danone North Europe, KP Snacks, Nomad Foods, and Premier Foods have committed to disclose the healthiness of their sales before any statutory requirement takes effect. The companies have also called on government to work with industry on a mandatory system covering large manufacturers, retailers, and hospitality businesses during the current Parliament.

The voluntary reporting will use the existing Nutrient Profiling Model that underpins current high fat, salt, and sugar restrictions. In 2027, the signatories plan to publish their 2026 sales-weighted average NPM 2004 scores, using a calculation already embedded in many compliance systems rather than waiting for businesses to rebuild data processes around the newer model.

That choice is operationally important. Large manufacturers already classify products against the current NPM for advertising and promotion restrictions, so much of the underlying product data exists. A new reporting regime still requires decisions on sales weighting, portfolio boundaries, acquisitions, divestments, and UK-specific reporting, but it does not begin with an entirely new nutritional metric.

Karen Betts, chief executive of the Food and Drink Federation, said: “That’s why we’re not waiting for regulation, but starting to report now on data that companies already hold.” The early adopters will share what they learn about collating and presenting the figures as government develops the mandatory framework.

The distinction between portfolio composition and product count will be central to the exercise. Reporting how many products are classified as healthier says little about what consumers actually buy if the largest-volume lines sit elsewhere in the range. A sales-weighted measure is intended to show whether changes in recipes, launches, and purchasing patterns are moving the commercial mix as well as the catalogue.

That also makes reformulation more visible. Reducing salt, sugar, saturated fat, or calories in a high-volume product can shift a company’s reported sales profile without requiring the product to disappear or be replaced. The same principle applies when manufacturers add fibre, fruit, or vegetables in ways that improve the NPM score while maintaining the product’s role in the market.

The FDF has already reported substantial reformulation activity across the sector. Manufacturers participating in its Action on Fibre campaign have introduced or reformulated around 500 higher-fibre products since 2021, illustrating the type of portfolio change that a common sales metric could make easier to track over time.

Measurement will still be difficult when businesses operate across several markets. Global reporting structures do not always separate UK sales cleanly, while mergers and acquisitions can make year-on-year comparisons look stronger or weaker simply because the portfolio changed. Seasonal ranges, pack-size changes, licensing arrangements, and discontinued products add further complications.

The method used to weight sales will also shape the result. Revenue can move because of inflation or promotional pricing without any change in the nutritional profile of products sold. Unit-based measures can give equal weight to packs of very different sizes, while volume or tonnage can become awkward when categories differ sharply in water content, serving size, and consumption pattern.

Those choices are likely to affect investment decisions. Once businesses are compared against a common measure, formulation teams, category managers, and commercial directors will be working against a number visible to government, investors, and competitors. A reporting system intended to encourage healthier sales can therefore influence which projects receive development resource and how quickly existing products are reformulated.

Factories will feel some of that pressure directly. Reformulation can alter viscosity, mixing behaviour, bake profile, moisture, shelf life, colour, and flavour, even when the nutritional change looks modest on paper. Reducing sugar in a bakery product or sauce, for example, can require changes to process settings or ingredient systems before the final product remains stable and acceptable at production scale.

Ingredient suppliers are likely to see the effect upstream. Demand can shift towards fibres, alternative sweetening systems, lower-sodium flavour technologies, vegetable inclusions, and functional ingredients that allow manufacturers to improve nutritional scores without sacrificing texture or shelf life. Those ingredients still have to work inside established processes and price points.

The reporting initiative also intersects with current HFSS restrictions. Manufacturers have already adjusted promotional, advertising, and product-development strategies around the existing NPM, so using the same model reduces the risk of companies managing two incompatible health classifications at the same time. The newer NPM may eventually play a larger role, but the early-adopter group argues that switching immediately would delay reporting while businesses build new measurements.

The government has yet to settle the final scope, methodology, regulator, and enforcement arrangements for mandatory healthy food sales reporting. That leaves a significant policy gap between the voluntary exercise beginning next year and the eventual statutory system.

The five manufacturers will now provide the first substantial operating test of how the proposed measure behaves across real portfolios. If the method proves workable, the argument will move quickly from whether companies can report the data to what government and industry do with it once performance is visible on a comparable basis.