Lockton’s dedicated food and drink insurance team understands the uncertain landscape you operate in. Leveraging decades of industry experience with key insurer relationships, we’ll deliver a bespoke insurance programme that safeguards your business, even in the most unpredictable times.

Food and Drink

Specialist risk and insurance advice for your food and drink business

Protecting your business in a fast-moving industry

The food and drink sector is a dynamic and often complex environment for businesses to operate in. Amid increasing regulatory scrutiny, rapidly evolving customer preferences, commodity fluctuations, the impacts of climate change and constant technological advances,businesses face a myriad of diverse risks.

Lockton’s dedicated food and drink team understands the uncertain landscape you operate in, through partnerships with industry research organisations and specialist consultants and advisers, we ensure that our proposition, thought leadership and solutions remain relevant and market leading. Leveraging decades of industry experience, serving many of the UK’s largest food and drink business, we’ll deliver a bespoke insurance programme that safeguards your business, even in the most unpredictable times.

From helping to protect your supply chains to de-risking your manufacturing operations, we design your insurance programme and support your risk management objectives, to help you and your business stay resilient in the face of an ever-evolving risk landscape. We look after your specific requirements as your business adapts and expands, working proactively to apply the depth and breadth of our expertise to your advantage. Taking a long-term approach to your needs, we’ll support your strategy and help you maximise new opportunities to meet your performance goals.

What we bring to your business

Operational and strategic risk management – We believe that supporting our clients to improve the management of their risk is a fundamental role of the broker and assists us in presenting your risk in the best possible way to the Insurance market. Our team of highly qualified and experienced risk consultants and advisers are on hand to support both your operational and strategic risk needs from BCP plans and risk registers to H&S consultancy, mock trials and fire risk assessments.

Property risk engineering – Our team of specialist property risk engineers and sprinkler experts will engage with you and your Insurers, to provide expert advice and challenge, ensuring practical and sensible solutions are found to enhance the protection of your physical assets and infrastructure; providing you and the insurance market with greater comfort and confidence in your risk.

Product recall expertise - Our team of dedicated product recall brokers are skilled in placement of contaminated products (CPI), trade name restoration and reputation risk protection.

Placement solutions - Food and drink manufacturing risks are becoming increasingly difficult to place in the market – with fire safety systems and exposure to composite panels of particular concern for insurers. Our close insurer partnerships allow us to secure cover even for hazardous trades.

Claims expertise - We have worked with our food and drink clients across retail and wholesale, helping them recover over $1billion of losses. We nurture close relationships with our clients and organise regular claims workshops to explore ways to prepare for a BI claim.

Cyber risk and insurance – With the growth of digitisation and automation in the food and drink sector, cyber-attacks and network and system interruptions are becoming a great threat for the industry. Our specialist cyber brokers and risk advisors can help you quantify and understand your risk exposures and assist in navigating the Insurance market, to position your risk positively with Insurers and achieve the optimum cyber insurance programme.

What we cover

  • Property Damage & Business Interruption

  • Employers, Public & Products Liability

  • Product recall and contaminated products

  • Livestock and disease

  • Hailstorm damage

  • Marine Cargo

  • Stock Throughput

  • Deterioration of Stock

  • Environmental Impairment

  • Professional Indemnity/ Errors & Omissions

  • Engineering and Hired in Plant

  • Intellectual Property

  • Parametric Solutions

  • Construction Project Insurance

  • Surety and Legal Indemnity

Download our brochure

Our food and drink specialists provide tailored insurance solutions that meet the needs and inherent exposures your business faces. Download our brochure to get a greater understanding of the insurance and risk management capabilities we have to offer.

Download our brochure
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Our Food and Drink team:

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Luke Withers

UK Food and Drink Industry Leader
luke.withers@lockton.com
+44 121 232 4508

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Freddie Schlesinger

Senior Vice President, Head of Product Recall & Reputational Risk
freddie.schlesinger@lockton.com
+44 776 924 8552

Read our latest food and drink insights

Food & Drink Risk Management

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Food & Drinks FAQs

This not a mandatory cover, however it could very well be required in contracts you may have with key customers, in particular large retailers or Grocers. It is worth checking your contracts to see if this is required to ensure you remain compliant. This type of Insurance covers the costs to your business of recalling faulty or harmful products from the market, including loss of profit, PR costs etc. There are several extensions you can buy to expand cover for scenarios such as government action, voluntary recalls. adverse publicity etc.

Product liability insurance protects businesses from financial losses arising from claims related to the production or sale of defective products. In the food and drink industry, it covers issues such as contamination, allergic reactions, and other product-related incidents.

Our supply chain risk management solutions are tailored to the food and drink production sector. We assist businesses in identifying potential risks, implementing strategies to mitigate disruptions, and ensuring operational continuity from sourcing raw materials to final product distribution. There are also Insurance solutions available for insuring against physical damage at key customer and supplier locations and more innovative insurance products that can cover damage to key crops or production locations from adverse weather events.

Yes, Lockton offers insurance solutions tailored for businesses of all sizes, including small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the food and drink industry. We understand the unique needs of smaller businesses and provide customized coverage to suit their requirements.

These exposures are generally more suited to other financial instruments and mechanisms such as futures trading and hedging etc. However, there are emerging alternative Insurance solutions available for Insuring against systemic weather events and the impact on crop production/ crop loss that can act as a form of hedge against commodity price volatility.

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We bring creative thinking and an entrepreneurial spirit to the insurance business and are uniquely positioned to help you succeed.

Talk to our team