PepsiCo scales APAC sustainability start-ups

PepsiCo has launched the 2026 Greenhouse Program Impact Edition in Asia Pacific, selecting five start-ups with technologies intended for deployment across logistics, agriculture, waste, emissions reduction, and circular economy operations.

The latest cohort includes Adiona from Australia, Bali Waste Cycle from Indonesia, Beijing AIForce Tech from China, Takachar from Thailand, and X-Centric from Australia. Over seven months, the companies will receive support to develop and test their technologies across operational settings linked to PepsiCo’s regional supply chain.

Adiona brings an artificial intelligence platform for logistics optimisation, using routing and transport data to reduce inefficient journeys, fuel consumption, and delivery complexity. Bali Waste Cycle focuses on decentralised waste processing and recycling systems, while Beijing AIForce Tech is developing electric agricultural machinery for lower-emission farm operations.

Takachar’s technology converts agricultural residues into biochar, creating a potential route for reducing open burning while adding a usable soil amendment. X-Centric provides soil analytics, supporting better decisions around soil health, crop productivity, and land management.

The programme is being run with a partner network that includes Artesian, AgFunder Asia, NTU Singapore’s Singapore Agri-Food Innovation Lab, AgriFutures growAG, Circulate Capital, GC Ventures, and CM Venture Capital. That mix brings together venture capital, agri-food innovation, circular economy expertise, and market access support.

For PepsiCo, the initiative broadens sustainability work beyond factory efficiency and packaging changes. The selected technologies sit across the extended supply chain, from farm operations and agricultural residues to logistics routing and waste recovery, where emissions and operational waste are often harder to control through centralised corporate programmes.

Asia Pacific presents a particularly demanding environment for this kind of deployment. Food and beverage supply chains in the region stretch across mature and emerging markets, with uneven logistics infrastructure, varied agricultural systems, differing waste collection models, and sharp differences in energy and transport capacity. A technology that works in one market may need operational adaptation before it can work in another.

The inclusion of logistics optimisation in the cohort reflects a practical route to emissions reduction. Fleet electrification remains uneven across many markets because charging infrastructure, vehicle cost, duty cycles, and route density vary widely. Software-led transport optimisation can reduce wasted mileage and improve utilisation before full fleet transition becomes viable.

The same practical logic is visible in food-sector automation investment more broadly. OAL’s £5m food robotics rollout showed how technology suppliers are being pushed towards production-ready systems rather than isolated demonstrations. PepsiCo’s start-up programme sits in that same operational lane: progress will be judged by whether technology works inside live supply chains.

Large food manufacturers are under increasing pressure to reduce Scope 3 emissions, improve supplier resilience, and cut waste without adding cost or complexity to already stretched networks. Agricultural sourcing, transport planning, packaging recovery, and by-product handling all sit outside the controlled environment of a single manufacturing site, yet they shape the final environmental footprint of the product.

By selecting technologies that address those external pressure points, PepsiCo is building a more operational model for sustainability across the region. The strongest candidates will be those that can be adopted by farms, logistics teams, suppliers, and local partners without creating another layer of administrative friction.

The 2026 cohort therefore reflects a shift from broad sustainability ambition towards site-level and network-level execution. In food and beverage supply chains, the next gains are likely to come from technologies that make existing systems work better, with less waste, fewer empty miles, and stronger visibility across the parts of the chain that have traditionally been hardest to measure.