OI Forum addresses growing threats to agrifood supply chain resilience

The OI Forum convenes members three times a year at participating organisations. Each meeting is structured around a theme drawn from the Forum’s landscape of future drivers and innovation priorities, ensuring discussions remain aligned with industry needs. The two-day event combines keynotes, presentations from ecosystem innovators, workshops, facility tours and peer discussions, leading participants to share practical experiences and identify opportunities for collaboration and future innovation.

Theme focus: Supply chain resilience – foresighting & data

The theme for the meeting centred on supply chain reliance, with a particular focus on foresighting and data. A series of keynote sessions highlighted the role of predictive data, emerging risks, and the importance of coordinated responses across the supply chain.

Key takeaways included:

• Many organisations operate with historical data, limiting their ability to predict and mitigate risk.
• The food supply chain is facing growing cybersecurity threats, which require organisations to adapt their approach and adopt modern architectural approaches with enhanced monitoring.
• Organisations are facing significant competition to attract people, particularly graduates, with the skills needed to support the transition to more digitally enabled ways of working.
• Food resilience is being reshaped by cumulative shocks, including from Brexit, COVID-19, war and energy volatility, resulting in the need for trusted data, automated measurements, and deeper collaboration to address fragmented systems and blind spots.

Members examined supply chain resilience through collaborative exercises, identifying shared challenges such as increasing unpredictability, fragmented data, and low levels of AI maturity. Discussions highlighted a strong appetite for more coordinated approaches, including shared models and predictive tools.

“These real-world cases highlighted the technology shift from pilot projects to more embedded use, with success depending on aligning data and AI to clearly define business needs – ensuring the right data and organisational foundations are in place,” says Michèle Routley, Industrial Associate for IfM Engage and OI Forum Lead.

Upskilling in AI for the agrifood sector

With AI playing an increasingly important role across the agrifood sector, organisations are facing a growing need to develop the right skills and capabilities, driving the OI Practice session to take a focus on this topic. The Forum explored how AI is reshaping open innovation practices. Examples demonstrated how AI can enhance the speed, consistency, and depth of analysis of large innovation ecosystems, enabling more informed collaboration decisions. However, participants emphasised that trust, fit and relationships still require human judgement.

The panel discussion and member case studies revealed several common enablers and challenges, including a continued gap in hands-on AI skills across organisations; the importance of high-quality, well-structured data; and the value of integrating AI into existing workflows, underpinned by trust, ethics, and data integrity. The need for cross-functional collaboration and cultural change was also highlighted as a significant driver for successful and scalable AI adoption.

Innovative use cases such as AI-driven risk reduction, the role of governance and data quality, and machine vision applications that improve efficiency, emissions, and animal welfare were shared.

Collaboration at the core

A defining feature of the OI Forum is its cross-sector collaboration, bringing together corporates, SMEs, start-ups, intermediaries, and universities. This diversity enables members to exchange best practices, co-develop solutions, and address multifaceted challenges.

Georgios Tetradis-Mairis, Head of R&D Futures at Nomad Foods, says, “Being part of the OI Forum has been hugely valuable for Nomad Foods. The network has enabled us to collaborate on projects, access funding opportunities, and connect with trusted third parties. Through engaging discussions, guest start-ups, and expert speakers, the Forum also supports our strategic thinking in emerging areas such as AI, while creating a safe space for open knowledge exchange.”

“As organisations navigate increasing disruption across agrifood supply chains, building the right skills and capabilities will be critical to strengthening resilience,” Michèle concludes. “The OI Forum remains an important platform for collaboration, enabling organisations to navigate this transition and develop a more skilled, adaptable, and innovation-ready workforce.“