Brand Power Meets Platform Strategy: How PepsiCo, Amazon and Coca-Cola Are Shaping APAC Food & Beverage Growth in 2026
- PYD
- 1 day ago
- 2 min read
Across APAC in 2025, the most influential food and beverage brand moves shared a common theme: scale is no longer enough without localisation, technology leverage, and portfolio relevance. From AI-powered farming and protein-led expansion to e-commerce experimentation and supply-chain resilience, leading multinationals are redefining how brand power converts into sustainable growth.
Insights & Strategic Moves
AI moves from pilot to platform in food production.
The 2025 APAC champion of PepsiCo’s Greenhouse Accelerator (GHAC), Beijing AIForce Technology, secured the top position and US$100,000 in prize funding with its AI-powered, low-carbon automatic tractor. Crucially, CEO Dr Han Wei positioned the win not as validation of a single product, but of a broader capability stack spanning AI and new-energy systems, signalling ambitions to expand across APAC beyond agriculture hardware alone. For PepsiCo, the outcome reinforces GHAC’s role as a pipeline for scalable, sustainability-linked technologies rather than one-off innovations.
Brand relevance is being reinforced through scale narratives.
The most-read APAC brand stories of 2025 featured household names such as MILO, Asahi and Mengniu, reflecting continued appetite for news on how legacy brands adapt in fast-moving Asian markets. What resonated was not reinvention for its own sake, but disciplined evolution—new formats, nutrition-aligned positioning, and regional relevance layered onto trusted brand equities.
Amazon Fresh tests Europe-to-Asia curation via Singapore.
Amazon Fresh is sharpening its Asian e-commerce proposition by expanding European, particularly French, food offerings—beginning in Singapore. The choice of market is strategic: Singapore’s highly developed and competitive e-commerce ecosystem, dominated by players such as Grab, Shopee and Lazada, makes it an ideal regional testbed. Rising Asian demand for European foods provides the consumer pull, while Singapore offers rapid feedback loops before broader APAC rollout.
Local production becomes a resilience lever, not just a cost play.
For Coca-Cola, the post-pandemic period has elevated supply-chain resilience to a board-level priority. The company’s ASEAN & South Pacific leadership has emphasised local manufacturing expansion and continuous innovation as core defences against future disruption. The strategic shift reframes localisation from an efficiency tactic to a structural hedge against geopolitical, logistical, and operational volatility.
Protein anchors portfolio expansion for CPG majors.
Protein continues to underpin innovation strategies across global FMCG leaders. Companies such as Danone, PepsiCo, and General Mills are leveraging protein to diversify portfolios, capture wellness-driven demand, and future-proof growth. Once a niche associated with sports nutrition, protein is now embedded across mainstream categories, positioning it as a durable growth pillar heading into 2026.
Future Outlook
As 2026 approaches, APAC’s leading food and beverage brands are converging on a clear playbook: deploy AI and sustainability at scale, localise operations to build resilience, and use protein and premiumisation to refresh mature portfolios. Competitive advantage will accrue to those that treat brand strength as a platform for experimentation, not a substitute for it.
The defining brand stories in APAC are no longer about who is biggest, but about who adapts fastest—turning technology, localisation and portfolio focus into repeatable engines of growth.
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