The Food and Drink Federation has named the winners of its 2026 Industry Awards, recognising the businesses and individuals judged to best embody the innovation, ambition and dynamism of the UK’s largest manufacturing sector — from export success to initiatives supporting healthier diets.

Rewarding ambition across the sector

Across 16 categories, winners were selected by a panel of expert judges for demonstrating the strongest innovation, ambition, talent and creativity in UK food and drink manufacturing — spanning rising stars and community-focused initiatives through to excellence in packaging and technology.

Winners include Felix, honoured for its FLEX initiative, which has helped provide a million meals to communities while cutting food waste by turning short-dated ingredients into long-life products for distribution. pladis was also recognised, for an initiative that has helped double the representation of women in its engineering workforce.

A night at The Troxy

The results were announced to an audience of 600 industry stakeholders at a glitzy ceremony held at The Troxy, an iconic cultural venue in East London. Sponsored by KPMG, the evening was hosted by Ravneet Gill, star of Channel 4’s Junior Bake Off and Netflix’s 5 Star Kitchen.

FDF’s chief executive welcomed attendees to the evening, commenting on the hard work that goes into keeping the food system running every day while building strong communities across the country.

Industry leaders react

Nick Pink, chief operating officer at the Food and Drink Federation (FDF), said: “The FDF Industry Awards are a brilliant opportunity to get together and celebrate the people and businesses working every day to feed the nation, put British innovation on the map, and power communities up and down the country.

“It was a spectacular, celebratory and inspiring evening, shining a light on new talent, new products, experience, ingenuity and success across the sector. A huge congratulations to all our winners and runners up.”

Linda Ellett, head of consumer, retail and leisure at KPMG UK, said: “KPMG UK is delighted to once again support the Food and Drink Federation Awards. In the face of economic uncertainty, geopolitical change and evolving consumer demands, the sector continues to demonstrate remarkable resilience and innovation. The awards provide an opportunity to recognise the outstanding people and businesses shaping the future of this vital industry, who have looked uncertainty straight in the eyes and said, ‘no problem, let’s do it’.”

The awards land at a moment when the sector is being asked to prove its resilience on several fronts at once — economic pressure, shifting consumer habits and the practical demands of feeding the country every day. Framing this year’s winners around waste reduction, community impact and workforce diversity signals where FDF and its sponsor see the industry’s strongest ground for a compelling story right now.

View the full list of winners.