A food manufacturer approached me after 14 months stuck on a packaging transition.
They’d tested recycled materials. Engaged suppliers. Built business cases. But when the time came to commit, every meeting ended the same way – with another round of refinements.
By the time we met, they’d reached internal deadlock.
Procurement kept updating price forecasts. Marketing was waiting for stronger consumer data. Finance wanted another round of modelling. And the sustainability team? Still refining supplier mapping to strengthen a business case which was already strong enough.
No one was blocking the project. Everyone was (over)preparing.
The client didn’t need help choosing packaging materials. They needed help deciding.
After months of reviews and sign-offs, every step still felt provisional. Each team could justify its position, but no one could say what would actually move the project forward.
This is what I call strategic hesitation – the state where organisations have done enough work to act, but can’t stop working long enough to commit.
Don’t mix it up with analysis paralysis. Analysis paralysis happens when you lack information. Strategic hesitation happens when you have plenty – but no mechanism to convert preparation into a decision.
Sustainability is often slowed by the very systems built to prevent mistakes. Meetings, validations, sign-offs – they keep everyone protected but leave the organisation standing still. What begins as caution becomes routine. And over time, the habit of careful coordination replaces decision-making.
Delay accumulates financial, strategic, and cultural costs.
That food manufacturer? Once we installed a decision deadline and assigned a single owner, they approved the packaging transition in four weeks. Fourteen months of preparation. Four weeks to decide – once the system allowed it.
Here’s what the data tells us about why – and what it actually costs.
The Anatomy of Hesitation
Here’s what the data tells us about why food and beverage companies slow down – even when they intend to move forward.
1. Competing priorities
31% of manufacturers cite competing business priorities as their top barrier to sustainability progress.
That’s not surprising. What’s revealing is what sits underneath.
28% say sustainability conflicts with financial goals. 24% say it doesn’t fit existing business models. 25% point to macroeconomic uncertainty.
Meanwhile, half of the companies globally now view sustainability as a value creation opportunity. But that intent rarely shapes how priorities are actually set.
The governance gap makes it worse. 40% of companies say their board holds formal responsibility for sustainability – but only 37% report that board members have relevant expertise.
Ambition without capability keeps sustainability competing with short-term objectives instead of shaping them.
(Sources: State of Food Manufacturing Report, July 2025; Morgan Stanley Institute for Sustainable Investing, May 2024)
2. Data dependence
Access to reliable sustainability data remains one of the central barriers to action.
Multiple studies confirm that a significant share of firms still lack decision-grade information – data that is complete, verifiable, and comparable across time and suppliers.
According to KPMG’s 2025 Maturity Index, 76% of businesses remain at early maturity stages of data management.
In the food and beverage industry, the problem is structural. Supply chains are fragmented. Agricultural inputs lack standardisation. “Better data” becomes an eternal promise.
And waiting for perfect measurement becomes a socially acceptable form of inaction.
(Sources: Boiral et al., 2024; Spallini et al., 2021; Gazzola et al., 2024; KPMG, 2025)
3. Ownership diffusion
In most food and beverage companies, sustainability is divided across procurement, supply chain, and corporate responsibility.
Each area performs within its own mandate. But companies rarely define how these efforts connect into a single decision path.
The result is often segmentation.
Research supports this. A study of 5,182 international firms found that companies performed better on sustainability when ownership was more widely distributed and shareholder rights were clearly defined. Another study of 1,017 Asian and European firms showed that businesses with dispersed ownership produced higher-quality integrated reports – especially in Europe, where regulation is stronger.
When responsibility is shared and connected, sustainability decisions advance faster. When control is concentrated or coordination fragmented, delay becomes the norm.
(Sources: Fiorillo & Santilli, 2024; Agustia et al., 2023)
4. Fear of exposure
Concerns about greenwashing now shape how managers approach sustainability decisions.
And no wonder why. 52% of consumers globally believe companies exaggerate or misrepresent their environmental progress. Between 2020 and 2022, 33% of all climate-related risk incidents in the sector were linked to greenwashing. By 2024, food and beverage ranked as the second most frequently cited industry in such cases.
Unfortunately, the risk is no longer theoretical.
In 2024, Coca-Cola stood trial in a case brought by an environmental nonprofit. The lawsuit claimed the company’s marketing misrepresented the recyclability of its plastic packaging.
Internally, the pressure is visible too. 49% of food and beverage professionals say they worry their company may be perceived as greenwashing.
This environment makes managers cautious – often excessively so. It results in extended validation cycles and repeated revisions of claims. Each layer of review delays implementation and reduces the organisation’s capacity to learn through practice.
What begins as risk management turns into hesitation. Protecting credibility outweighs creating progress.
(Sources: RepRisk; Bloomberg Law, 2024; Food Navigator Sustainable September survey, 2025)
The Cost of Delay
Delay appears safe. Another quarter to review data. Another compliance meeting. Another round of vendor negotiations…
All of it creates the impression of prudent decision-making.
But in sustainability, delay multiplies risk. For example, reaching a given climate target becomes roughly 40% more expensive for every decade action is postponed.
Here’s how the cost breaks down.
1. Market position
In food and beverage, timing defines advantage.
Early movers secure supplier capacity, lock in access to certified materials, and negotiate better terms. Their relationships shape future standards.
Companies that wait, enter the market after those resources are already committed.
On paper, late adopters spend 30–40% less on green technologies than pioneers. But the savings are deceptive – they’re buying into a smaller opportunity.
Products carrying sustainability-related claims grew by an average of 28% over five years, compared with 20% for products without such claims. That eight-point gap translates directly into lost share. These products now represent 56% of all category growth.
Delay doesn’t save cost. It concedes the market.
(Source: McKinsey & NielsenIQ, 2023)
2. Operational cost
Packaging redesigns deferred by six months can require double the budget when retailers tighten accreditation deadlines or regulatory requirements change.
Retrofitting is an expensive halfway measure. It typically absorbs around two-thirds of the cost of installing new equipment – yet the upgraded systems reach only about three-quarters of the efficiency.
Designing for sustainability from the start avoids that imbalance.
Postponing upgrades also carries a recurring penalty. Operational efficiency can drop by 15–20% each year, and those declines accumulate.
One company I worked with lost a major retail tender entirely after missing a sustainability certification window. A single postponement decision eliminated an entire revenue stream.
(Source: Mordor Intelligence, 2025)
3. Access to capital
The financial impact of inaction is immediate and measurable.
Access to sustainability-linked financing depends on demonstrated results – not promises to do better in the future. As sustainable finance becomes mainstream, companies without clear transition plans face higher borrowing costs or lose eligibility for preferred financing altogether.
More than $30 trillion in ESG-oriented funds require transparent supply-chain reporting. Investment decisions increasingly reward proof of progress over stated ambition.
Firms unable to provide verified sustainability data carry a lasting penalty. The cost of capital rises – and it repeats with every new funding cycle.
(Source: Compliance & Risks, 2025)
4. Organisational capability
This is the deepest cost.
Each round of postponement weakens an organisation’s ability to act. Teams that stay in analysis mode don’t build the habits that come from implementation – the testing, iteration, and problem-solving that turn plans into practice.
By the time a company finally commits, it faces a steep learning curve.
Early movers have already built supplier partnerships, integrated sustainability metrics into performance systems, tested circular packaging, and refined Scope 3 data processes.
The laggards are only beginning.
BCG + CO2 AI Climate Survey quantified this: sustainability leaders were twice as likely to have embedded ESG metrics into operational dashboards. It shows the gap is beyond just strategic. It’s structural.
That capability gap, measured not in euros but in organisational adaptation capacity, represents the true cost of “not yet.”
(Source: BCG + CO2 AI Climate Survey, 2025)
Reintroducing Movement
In food and beverage, most delays come from good management instincts applied to new kinds of problems.
The discipline that protects a factory from error can, left unchecked, protect an organisation from change.
Each “not yet” feels sensible on its own. Together, they shape a strategy.
The question is no longer when to start, but how much longer a delay can still be called preparation.
The alternative to hesitation is a system that makes progress safe enough to attempt.
Across food and beverage, a few mechanisms consistently help companies regain momentum without losing control.
Pilot projects
Pilots allow learning without full exposure. When treated as experiments rather than commitments, they generate evidence that change is possible.
Nestlé’s pilot to produce low-carbon fertiliser from food-waste streams shows how this works in practice. The initiative converted waste into usable inputs, demonstrating how circular practices can reduce emissions even at a small scale.
More importantly, pilots give teams confidence that change can be managed within existing operations.
(Source: ESG Today, 2023)
Internal carbon pricing
Carbon pricing translates ambition into numbers that business leaders understand.
By assigning a shadow cost to emissions – €35 per tonne at Danone, €40 at Unilever – companies bring environmental impact into investment logic.
It changes the question from “Is sustainability affordable?” to “Which cost do we choose to carry?”
(Sources: Danone, February 2020; edie, 2019)
Cross-functional sprint teams
Sprint teams resolve ownership diffusion.
When operations, procurement, and marketing work as a single project group with time-bound authority, progress accelerates. Decision-making moves closer to the work itself.
Kraft Heinz embedded sustainability into cross-functional teams, enabling an 18.4% reduction in waste-to-landfill intensity.
(Source: Kraft Heinz report, 2023)
Scenario planning
Scenario planning addresses the anxiety of uncertainty.
Banks already do this. NGFS (Network for Greening the Financial System) scenarios stress-test whether F&B borrowers can service debt if carbon prices spike or physical climate damage hits their supply base.
The same logic applies internally. Modelling outcomes under different policy or cost assumptions helps managers act with measured confidence. Instead of waiting for clarity, they prepare for multiple futures.
If your lenders are scenario planning around your business, you should be too.
Building System Integrity
Every company reaches a moment when the system needs a closer look.
Usually, it’s because the supply chain has grown more complex, or because decisions that used to be straightforward now require three meetings and a steering committee.
If any of these patterns sound familiar, it may be time to examine where your system is under strain.
I developed the Operational Resilience Review as a short diagnostic to help identify which parts of your governance are stable and which need adjustment to keep decisions clear and reliable.
And if you want to keep building on this, follow me on Linkedin where I go deeper into closing the gap between sustainability commitments and the systems that deliver them.
P.S. That food manufacturer spent fourteen months preparing. Four weeks deciding. What’s ONE decision in your organisation that’s been “almost ready” for too long?
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