Agenda – November 17

Which events and market disruptions defined 2026, and what do tariffs, trade tensions and emerging risks and opportunities mean for sourcing, operational resilience and competitiveness in 2027? 

How are tariff and trade-policy decisions made, and which early signals should source teams monitor before disruption reaches their supply chains? Explore how changing relationships between the US, Europe and China could reshape trade flows, sourcing costs and availability and how businesses can prepare before supply tightens. 

What does the procurement function become over the next decade, and who gets to design it? Examine the shift and the version of procurement that’s coming and what it asks of the people leading it.  

Procurement is being asked to own continuity, carry enterprise risk, protect margin and govern AI, usually without the resources or authority to match. How do leaders take control of that redefinition rather than have it done to them? Examine what it takes to own the COGS conversation at board level, and the governance and capability changes that make the rest possible. 

AI isn’t simply automating procurement; it is reshaping its operating model and the role of the CPO. This panel will explore whether the capacity created by AI is being reinvested in market intelligence, supplier relationships and better business decisions, or primarily used to reduce costs and headcount. It will also examine how CPOs can move beyond functional execution and play a greater role in managing cost, margin, supply and risk. 

What’s moving across grains, proteins, dairy, oils and packaging, and what’s driving it? Expana’s senior price reporting analysts give a straight read on each category, followed by the forecasting team on the price drivers worth watching.

Most risk frameworks in food procurement were built for conditions that no longer exist, and decisions now must be made faster than the data supports. Who owns the call when procurement, finance and commercial all have a stake, and what have the best teams stopped doing to make room to act? 

Which suppliers warrant long-term partnership status, and what is that partnership worth when conditions change? Examine how leading organisations decide who to back, what relationship capital looks like in practice, and where partnerships return value in R&D, speed and priority. 

This panel puts both sides on the stage: how buyers earn priority through relationships, contracts and indexation, and how suppliers actually decide who moves up the queue when they cannot serve everyone. Where are you genuinely single sourced and does your most important supplier rank you where you think they do?

What’s the decision you made in the last 12 months that you’re least sure about now? An open conversation about the calls that are hardest to get right in a permanently disrupted market. What’s keeping us up at night. What moves the business and what’s just noise. What we’d cut tomorrow if we could.  

Ten minutes to work out what you’ll do differently following the event. Everyone leaves with a “Tomorrow Morning Action Card”: one decision changed, one exposure named, one action committed to.