Page 24 - Food&Drink magazine April 2022

ALTERNATIVE PROTEINS
v2food is dominating the market here and in export markets.
The new playing field
The alternative protein sector is at the top of the class when it comes to growth and investment, spurred on by its environmental and nutritional promises and potential. Kim Berry looks at the current state of play.
are purchasing multiple times within the category.
The report said millennials and Gen Z make up 47 per cent of the US population and continue to grow their spending power in store and online. Ecommerce sales of plant-based foods grew 47 per cent in the last year to US$351 million.
At FFT, Matt Spence from Guggenheim Partners said the feel-good aspects of food tech – helping the planet, feeding the world – was inspiring more traditional funders to diversify into food.
And there has certainly been investment in Australia in recent years. V2food has raised $185 million since it launched in 2019 and is now valued at more than $500 million. It was valued at $2 million when it launched.
Fënn Foods – its retail brand is Veef – raised $3 million in February; and agribusiness Harvest Road, part of Andrew Forrest’s Tattarang, invested in commercial scale plant-based pioneer ProForm Foods – retail brand is Meet – for an undisclosed sum in January.
Australian Plant Proteins secured a $45 million investment from global agrifood company Bunge and just announced its $378 million joint venture with Thomas Foods International and pulse and ingredient supplier AGT Foods Australia to build three new plant protein manufacturing plants in South Australia.
Regenerative food company Wide Open Agriculture raised $20 million through institutional investors last December to develop Western Australia’s first oat milk
manufacturing
plant, and
IN its annual consumer trends report this year, Innova Market Insights recorded a first. When asked what global issues concerned them the most, consumers’ top response was the health of the planet.
In the 14 years Innova has carried out the survey, personal health has topped the list every single time. Until now.
It stands to reason that as consumer behaviour and attitudes change rapidly and dramatically, our food and beverage production system will be having
its own revolution.
Partner at CSIRO’s venture capital fund Main Sequence Ventures Phil Morle says it’s an exciting time to be a venture
capitalist because there are big problems to solve and making enough food for 10 billion people while we’re running out of land is one of them.
“That problem synchronises with the maturity of food production, science and the wealth of opportunity that exists to develop new ways of making food and build incredibly valuable companies,” Morle says.
MONEY MONEY MONEY
At the Future Food-Tech (FFT) conference in the US last month, research firm Crunchbase said US$12.8 billion was invested in food tech through almost
1000 deals in 2021, double the amount invested in 2020.
Morle recounts that Impossible Foods, the largest plant-based protein company in the world, had raised half a billion dollars before the first consumer had taken their first bite.
Research carried out in the US by the Plant Based Foods Association, The Good Food Institute, and SPINS put the US plant-based market value at $7.4 billion. While some of the stratospheric growth rates have slowed, the research found 62 per cent (79 million US households) are now buying plant-based products and
79 per cent of those
ABOVE & RIGHT: Jim Fader, CEO of cow-free dairy company Eden Brew.
“There’s a lot of money going into cool companies
with great molecules like Eden Brew, but you need
a solution to manufacture at scale if you’re going to compete with traditional goods on the shelf.” Jim Fader
24 | Food&Drink business | April 2022 | www.foodanddrinkbusiness.com.au