PepsiCo and Spain's largest fertilizer producer Fertiberia have entered a long-term partnership to scale the use of green hydrogen-based fertilizers across European agriculture. Under the agreement, Fertiberia will progressively supply PepsiCo with up to 150,000 metric tons of its Impact Zero crop nutrition solutions annually by 2030, enough to cover approximately 400,000 acres or 162,000 hectares of farmland. The deal positions PepsiCo as one of the largest corporate buyers of low-carbon fertilizer in Europe and signals a structural shift in how major food companies approach upstream emissions.

 

Scope of the Supply Agreement

 

The 150,000-ton annual volume will be applied across key crops including potatoes, corn, sunflower, sugar beet and rapeseed, which serve as core ingredients for PepsiCo's leading brands such as Lay's, Doritos, Ruffles and Cheetos. Combined with PepsiCo's existing low-carbon supplier agreements, the new deal is expected to raise the share of low-carbon fertilizer used across the company's European supply chain to around 50 percent by 2030. This level of substitution would represent one of the most ambitious agricultural decarbonisation commitments in the European food sector.

The programme will initially launch in France, Romania, Serbia, Greece and Turkey, while expanding existing deployments in Spain and Portugal, with plans to roll out the initiative to additional European markets over time. The phased approach allows the partners to scale supply, agronomic support and farmer training in parallel, reducing implementation risk across multiple jurisdictions. The geographic spread also ensures that the programme reaches a representative cross-section of European cropping systems and climatic conditions.

 

How Green Hydrogen Lowers Fertilizer Emissions

 

Fertiberia's low-carbon fertilizer is produced using green hydrogen instead of natural gas, which the company states reduces greenhouse gas emissions by up to 63 percent compared with traditional fertilizers. Conventional fertilizer production is highly energy-intensive and relies on natural gas as both a feedstock and an energy source, making it one of the largest sources of industrial emissions in the agricultural value chain. Substituting green hydrogen at the production stage addresses Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions for fertilizer manufacturers and Scope 3 emissions for downstream food companies.

Fertiberia's product range integrates additional efficiency-enhancing technologies, including slow-release formulas and biological inhibitors that improve nutrient uptake and reduce losses to the environment. The company has been developing lower-carbon hydrogen-based fertilizers since 2022, including NSAFE, which it describes as the world's first bio-inhibitor of nitrification designed to prevent nitrogen losses. By combining feedstock decarbonisation with use-phase efficiency gains, the company can deliver emission reductions across the full lifecycle of fertilizer use rather than only at the production stage.

 

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Pilot Results and Farmer Adoption

 

The collaboration follows a successful pilot programme between PepsiCo and Fertiberia in Spain and Portugal that demonstrated tangible emission reductions in real-world conditions. The pilot reduced potato farming emissions by up to 15 percent and corn farming emissions by 20 percent, providing a quantitative basis for the broader rollout. These outcomes give the partners confidence that the technology can deliver consistent results at commercial scale across different crop types.

Farmer feedback from the pilot has been a key input into the design of the expanded programme. Herdade da Malhadinha, a farmer in Portugal using Impact Zero fertilizer, said the fertilization method is technically identical to standard practice and therefore does not require changes to daily operations. The compatibility with existing field equipment and routines is a significant practical advantage, since adoption barriers in agricultural decarbonisation programmes often stem from operational complexity rather than from the technology itself.

 

Strategic Importance for PepsiCo's Climate Targets

 

Fertilizer production and use currently accounts for roughly half of PepsiCo's average potato carbon footprint in Europe, making it one of the company's largest single agricultural emission sources. Decarbonising this category therefore offers a structural lever for reducing the overall footprint of the company's snack portfolio rather than relying solely on packaging or operational efficiencies. The Fertiberia partnership directly targets this high-impact category at meaningful scale.

PepsiCo has made public commitments to implementing regenerative, restorative or protective practices across 10 million acres globally by 2030 and to reducing Scope 3 forest, land and agriculture greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent by 2030 from a 2022 baseline. Archana Jagannathan, Chief Sustainability Officer of PepsiCo Europe, Middle East and Africa, said switching to low-carbon fertilizer is one of the strongest levers available to reduce agricultural emissions and that digital technology will complement the transition. The framing positions the partnership as central to delivering on the company's climate commitments rather than peripheral to them.

 

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Digital Tools and Regenerative Agriculture

 

In addition to providing low-carbon fertilizer, the partners plan to offer farmers technical guidance and digital tools, including precision agriculture technologies that use data to optimise application and track the implementation of regenerative practices. This combination links input substitution with operational decision-making, allowing the impact of the new fertilizer to be measured and refined at field level. Precision tools also help farmers reduce overall fertilizer use, generating cost savings alongside emission reductions.

Fertiberia's Chief Operating Officer David Herrero said the journey has taken on greater significance thanks to partnerships such as the one with PepsiCo, framing the work as a demonstration of how shared innovation can drive both climate action and food security across Europe. The combined emphasis on decarbonisation and food system resilience is increasingly important to corporate buyers, who face investor scrutiny on climate performance and rising operational risk from supply chain disruptions. Programmes that address both objectives simultaneously are likely to attract continued investment.

 

Outlook for Sustainable Agriculture in Europe

 

Fertilizers contribute approximately 2 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions globally, making the category a meaningful target for climate action even before considering broader nitrogen and water quality benefits. Recent geopolitical tensions in the Middle East have also exposed fertilizer supply as a critical vulnerability for global food systems, with the Iranian conflict pressuring availability and creating knock-on effects for agricultural output. Building domestic European low-carbon fertilizer capacity therefore addresses both decarbonisation and supply security objectives simultaneously.

Whether PepsiCo and Fertiberia can deliver on the 2030 volume commitments will depend on green hydrogen availability, production capacity expansion and continued farmer adoption across multiple European markets. Sustained execution would establish a template for similar partnerships between food companies and fertilizer producers across other major agricultural markets. The deal also reinforces the role of corporate offtake commitments in scaling low-carbon industrial production at the pace required to meet European climate targets.