Celebrating practical climate action, grower learning and a vision being brought to life across the supply chain
On Friday, 25 September, Worldwide Fruit Limited (WFL) was named Climate Champion of the Year at the 2026 FPC Fresh Awards at JW Marriott Grosvenor House in London.
For those of us at Blue North who have had the opportunity to work alongside WFL for many years, this was a particularly special moment.
Of course, it is an award worth celebrating in its own right. The FPC Fresh Awards bring together around 750 people from across the UK and international fresh produce industry each year and have become affectionately known as the “Fresh Produce Oscars”. But what makes this recognition especially meaningful is what sits behind it.
This is not an award for one project, one person or one clever sustainability initiative.
It recognises years of work to turn climate ambition into practical, measurable action in orchards and across the wider grower network.
WFL had the vision. Then they built the team.
The climate and regenerative agriculture programme is very much WFL’s brainchild.
Rather than treating carbon, soil health, water, biodiversity, climate resilience and farm economics as separate sustainability issues, WFL set out to understand how they fit together within a working farming system. Over time, this has grown into a more integrated, evidence-led approach to climate and regenerative agriculture.
They also understood early on that they could not do it alone.
Over time, WFL has brought together what sometimes feels like a sustainability “dream team”: growers, agronomists, carbon specialists, technical partners, retailers, research and landscape partners, all contributing different pieces of the puzzle.
Blue North has been fortunate to be part of that journey since 2019, working closely with WFL, its growers and the wider group of partners as the programme has grown and evolved.
WFL has continued to set an ambitious direction and bring the right people around the table, while those involved have helped turn that ambition into practical work.
One of the most rewarding parts of this journey has been watching the programme evolve from sustainability measurement and reporting into something much broader: a practical system for testing, learning, measuring and sharing.
The growers are at the heart of it
Perhaps the most important people in this story are the farmers.
Much of what WFL is now helping to measure, document and share did not begin in a boardroom or sustainability strategy session. It began in orchards.
Growers have been experimenting, observing, adapting and learning for years. They are looking at their soil differently. They are questioning how water moves through their farms, how much disturbance is really necessary, what biodiversity contributes to a functioning orchard, how nutrients cycle and how farming systems can become more resilient.
And they are not doing this simply because a retailer, exporter or sustainability programme asks them to.
For many farmers, this is about something far more personal. It is about caring for the land that supports their businesses, their families and their communities. It is about leaving that land in a better condition for the next generation.
That is why their willingness to open their farms, share what has worked, talk honestly about what has not worked, and allow others to learn from their experience is so valuable.
WFL’s Model Farm approach builds on that willingness. Commercial orchards such as Chandler & Dunn in the UK and Dennegeur in South Africa become learning sites where regenerative practices can be assessed under real farming conditions rather than on demonstration plots removed from commercial reality. These are working orchard learning sites where practices are tested under real conditions and outcomes are measured in ways growers can trust.
There is something very powerful about that approach. It says: we do not need to pretend that we already have all the answers. We can learn together.
From ambition to evidence
That learning is increasingly backed by measurement.
During 2025, WFL’s Product Carbon Footprinting programme expanded to 35 sites across 25 key suppliers, using Blue North’s Confronting Climate Change (CCC) product carbon footprinting platform to build a stronger understanding of emissions and hotspots across key fruit supply chains.
That same technical partnership also underpins WFL’s UK pome emissions and removals programme, which assesses farm emissions alongside selected carbon sinks. This is helping WFL build a more complete picture of carbon sources and sinks within perennial fruit production and strengthen the evidence base for future climate action.
At the same time, the Model Farms and WFL’s seven-pillar Regen Roadmap are providing a practical framework for turning that evidence into action.
An equally important part of the programme is making sure that learning does not remain on individual farms.
Blue North has helped WFL capture grower experiences through its regenerative agriculture case study series, spending time with farmers, understanding what they are doing and why, and translating those experiences into practical stories that can be shared more widely.
Those case studies, together with Model Farm learning, carbon insights, scorecard information and other practical resources, feed into WFL’s Resilience Hub and Knowledge Hub. The Hub is designed to make grower-led learning, Model Farm updates, scorecard insights and carbon evidence more accessible across the wider supply base.
The principle behind it is simple: take what is being learned in one place and make it useful somewhere else.
The FPC judges captured this particularly well:
“Worldwide Fruit is showing growers not simply why they need to change, but how to change, how to measure progress, and how to share what they learn. This bold leadership is helping to create a topfruit production base that is lower-carbon, more nature-positive, commercially viable, and more resilient to the climate challenges ahead.”
Nigel Jenney, Chief Executive of the Fresh Produce Consortium, also highlighted the practical nature of WFL’s approach, noting that it is making climate action useful to the people who actually have to put it into practice. By working with growers in their orchards, measuring the results and sharing what is learned, he said, the programme is helping others make more informed changes.
That distinction matters.
There is no shortage of climate ambition in agriculture. The difficult part is turning ambition into decisions that make sense in an orchard on Monday morning.
Recognition beyond one category
The Climate Champion title was not WFL’s only recognition at this year’s awards.
WFL was also a finalist for Net Zero Impact, Sustainability Excellence: Ethical, Sustainability Excellence: Supply Chain and Best Marketing Campaign for its British Jazz apple campaign.
The judges described WFL’s Net Zero work as “a confident, credible model to steer fruit growers towards a lower carbon future” and praised its ethical sustainability approach for showing “a clear sense of purpose in embedding ethical and environmental sustainability across its entire operation”.
Its supply chain entry was recognised as “a practical, transparent and scalable system for supply chain resilience”, while the British Jazz apple campaign was praised for its “clarity of purpose and quality of execution from start to finish”.
Together, those nominations tell their own story. Sustainability is becoming less of a standalone project within WFL and increasingly part of how the business thinks about its growers, supply chains and future.
A word from David
David Farrell, CEO of Blue North, attended the FPC Fresh Awards with the WFL team.
“Friday evening at the FPC Awards was a wonderful celebration, not only for Worldwide Fruit, but for the UK fresh produce industry at large. The passion and excellence of this industry was on full display on Friday evening. I had the privilege of joining the Worldwide Fruit leadership team, along with senior technical and commercial managers from M&S and Ocado, for the occasion. Our longstanding relationship with Worldwide Fruit has profoundly shaped who we are as a business and significantly increased the reach and scale of our impact. They thoroughly deserve this recognition, and we are proud of our association with a company so sincere in its efforts and single-minded about supporting positive change at farm level.”
Congratulations, WFL
From all of us at Blue North, congratulations to the Worldwide Fruit team on this thoroughly deserved recognition.
We have seen first-hand the commitment behind WFL’s climate and regenerative agriculture strategy and the determination to translate that strategy into meaningful change at farm level.
We look forward to continuing our collaboration with WFL, its growers and partners as that strategy is brought to life across the farms that supply them, and as the learning continues to grow and be shared more widely.
Congratulations to everyone at Worldwide Fruit on being named Climate Champion of the Year.