The Middle East conflict is at the centre of how consumers across the Asia Pacific region are rethinking what value means, according to Mintel’s latest regional report. For manufacturers, APAC Food and Drink Landscape 2026, looks at the export markets that impacted FY26 results and the input and freight costs still working through the system.
The joint US and Israel operation against Iran began on 28 February and the Strait of Hormuz remains closed as of last week, with Brent oil prices well above pre-conflict levels for most of the year.
Mintel argues that in South-East Asia, where many markets rely heavily on imported energy, the flow-through to fuel, logistics and household budgets is reorganising where people shop and what they will pay for.
Some Australian processors have already attached a number to this. Noumi disclosed last week that the conflict cost it roughly $2 million in second half operating EBITDA through unrecovered cost increases and lost sales into the region.
Smaller baskets, closer to home
Mintel expects the fuel crisis to accelerate a shift toward neighbourhood retailing across South-East Asia. Rising transport costs discourage trips to hypermarkets and malls, pushing volume to wet markets, neighbourhood grocers, convenience stores and minimarkets. Households are buying more often but buying less each time, and focusing more on the essentials.
For exporters, questions around format and price point rather than brand. Small stores carry a limited range and prioritise fast-moving essentials, so packaged food and beverage companies pitching at the hypermarket shelf are pitching at the wrong shelf. Mintel also flags two supply side responses: positioning South-East Asia as a halal hub or secondary supply hub to derisk global halal supply during disruption, and securing multiple approved packaging options to absorb petrochemical input shocks without pulling product off shelf.
That last point is the one most likely to land with Australian operations teams. A single approved pack format is a single point of failure, and requalifying a substitute under time pressure is expensive. The region is also where the growth has been. Noumi reported long-life dairy export sales up 49.4 per cent and plant-based sales into the region up 22.7 per cent, while Bega Group recorded 12 per cent international revenue growth.
The Australian numbers
|
Australian data points in the report |
Figure |
Fieldwork and base |
|
Spending less on takeaway and delivery than a year ago |
34% |
Kantar Profiles/Mintel, September 2024 |
|
Adventurous about trying new world cuisine dishes |
64% |
Mintel Global Consumer |
|
Ate Chinese cuisine in the last three months |
74% |
Kantar Profiles/Mintel, January 2025 |
|
Ate Mexican, Indian, Thai, Japanese |
64, 60, 59, 52% |
Kantar Profiles/Mintel, January 2025 |
|
Women 18-34 in functional food and drink who have used collagen |
24% |
Mintel, January 2025 (base 117 women) |
|
Men in the same group who have used collagen |
18% |
Mintel, January 2025 |
|
Women who trust functional claims more when backed by scientific evidence |
48% |
Mintel, base not stated |
|
Women who prefer to moderate full-sugar intake over choosing reduced sugar |
49% |
Mintel, September 2025 |
|
Women 18-34 who associate sports drinks with hydration |
39% |
Mintel, September 2025 |
|
Share of Australian women sports drink volume, 18-34 vs 55 plus |
39% vs 7% |
Mintel, September 2025 |
Fakeaway, the treat substitute
Domestically, Mintel highlights the “fakeaway occasion”. A third of Australians report spending less on takeaway and delivery than a year earlier, but the report argues consumers are not abandoning treat occasions so much as relocating them, looking for lower cost ways to recreate reward and indulgence at home.
With NPD, Australians say they are adventurous with world cuisine, but consumption is concentrated in five familiar cuisines – Chinese, Mexican, Indian, Thai and Japanese. Mintel says that finding is an argument against launching unfamiliar cuisines and instead, innovating within the known ones. Accompaniments and meal kits, the products least likely to be used on a midweek night, are named as the weekend fakeaway opportunity. For example, naan alongside the butter chicken, rather than a new butter chicken.
The sugar finding worth arguing with
The functional drinks section revealed a finding that goes against a decade of reformulation orthodoxy. Mintel found 49 per cent of Australian women who drink non-alcoholic beverages prefer to moderate their intake of full-sugar variants rather than switch to low or reduced sugar options, with 35 per cent disagreeing and 15 per cent unsure.
Mintel’s recommendation is to reposition sugar as a carbohydrate doing a job in hydration rather than treat it as a liability, and to shift sports drinks from an exercise occasion to a daily hydration and wellness occasion. It cites Dr Witt’s Iso Vitamin Water as an example of on-pack carbohydrate-electrolyte messaging, while noting the link is not made explicit enough.
The recruitment target is women, who are under-represented in the category, and the suggested hook is collagen. Almost a quarter of 18- to 34-year-old Australian women who use functional food and drink have used collagen products, ahead of men. Mintel is candid that efficacy is contested and that any formulation would need to address absorbability, vitamin C as a co-nutrient, dosage and duration. Nearly half of Australian women say scientific evidence makes a functional claim more trustworthy, which is a warning as much as an opportunity given how ACCC enforcement around unsubstantiated claims has been trending.
Culture as a formulation input
The third theme is cultural fluency. In Thailand, herbal ingredients are trusted but poorly understood, with only around a third of consumers saying they understand how they function, and innovation clustered in brain, bone and immune claims while weight management sits largely unaddressed. In snacks, herbs are being used for flavour intensity rather than function, which Mintel frames as a training ground for later functional acceptance.
The report also picks up third-culture cuisine, flavours built from lived cross-cultural experience rather than fusion novelty, and ritual-led innovation around occasions such as Ramadan, where packaged iftar formats can carry both convenience and cultural discovery. For Australian exporters into Muslim majority markets, that sits alongside the halal supply argument.
Mintel Food and Drink senior analyst, Yunn Lim, said that consumers are becoming more intentional in how they spend and are questioning whether products deliver real health outcomes, and that “value in APAC today extends far beyond affordability”.
