F&B manufacturing in 2026: Insights from an Industry 4.0 and Operational Excellence leader

From Vietnam’s youthful consumers to Thailand’s aging population, Singapore’s affluent buyers, and Indonesia’s rising middle class, Southeast Asia showcases market diversity that is full of promise. For the food and beverage manufacturing sector, this necessitates rapid adaptation to varied consumer choices.

One who understands the market dynamics from an operational perspective, Franklin Kurniawan, Co-founder and CEO of Opex Consulting Group, shares his views on the opportunities, challenges, and technological requirements that will define the sector in the year ahead. Mr. Kurniawan is a recognized authority on operational excellence and digital transformation in manufacturing, with a focus on Industry 4.0 technologies and end-to-end supply chain optimization.

Franklin Kurniawan, Co-founder and CEO of Opex Consulting Group (Singapore – Indonesia – Malaysia)

Underscoring the demographics driving growth, he said: “In Southeast Asia, these directly translate into higher demand for packaged, convenient, and premium food and beverage products. This demographic shift also drives volume growth and opens doors for value-added product innovation. This is, by far, the most significant opportunity for the F&B manufacturing industry.”

Yet, alongside these opportunities lie the structural and external pressures that weigh on the industry. “Significant and persistent challenges faced by the region, however, come from the complex logistics, varying cold-chain capacity, volatile and seasonal demand, and vulnerability to global geopolitical headwinds and environmental risks (like El Niño affecting agricultural yields),” he said. “This leads to volatile raw material costs and potential disruptions. Rising operational costs in energy, raw materials, and logistics, compounded by inflation, are forcing manufacturers to walk a ‘fine line’ between profitability and maintaining price affordability for consumers, especially in value-conscious segments.”

(Photo: Wrightstudio I Dreamstime.com)

Looking ahead, Mr. Kurniawan also emphasizes the need for a mindset shift and a deeper embrace of digital transformation, saying:  “The F&B manufacturing industry's landscape in 2026 is defined by a delicate balance between leveraging next-gen tech and navigating intense external pressures. It is absolutely necessary for the industry to wake up and change the mindset that what works for the past 10 or 20 years will not necessarily work now and the next 20 years. Growth often comes with costs. Some are necessary but a lot of them are hidden and can be avoided with digital transformation throughout the entire end-to-end supply chain,” he said.

“To this end, F&B manufacturing is often caught between global supply chain instability (climate, geopolitics) and highly granular, rapidly changing local consumer demands. Only factories that invest in agility, digitalization, people development and regional resilience will successfully navigate this environment.”

Technology, in particular, will play a decisive role in shaping the sector’s future. Mr. Kurniawan stressed the urgency of modernization: “A large segment of the industry still operates with aging equipment, disconnected legacy systems, and manual workflows. Integrating AI technology into the manufacturing system offers massive gains but it is unattainable when everything is outdated, manual, disintegrated and analogue. The digital transformation to a connected, digital, data-informed factory requires strategy, direction, drive and support from the top leadership, resources, and patience. Successful manufacturers in this transformation differentiate themselves from the competition by benefiting from lower factory downtime by using predictive maintenance on critical equipment, AI-assisted quality decisions using in-line data, intelligent systems for dynamic labor and production scheduling, and AI-driven pricing strategies,” he said.

“In 2026, success in F&B manufacturing will not belong to the largest players, but to the most adaptive. The mandate for technology is clear: build systems that can be programmed, reconfigured, and optimized at the speed of the consumer and the volatility of the market.”

Having the agility to adapt, the foresight to invest in digital transformation, and the resilience to balance global volatility with local consumer demands, will help ensure manufacturers can capture evolving consumer demands.