Page 25 - Food&Drink magazine April 2022

Harvest B raised $4.5 million to fund its intelligent ingredient system.
Late last year the University of Adelaide announced a $2.5 million project with the UK University of Nottingham’s International Flavour Research Centre to improve the taste of plant-based foods and ingredients.
And All G Foods entered the market in September having completed a $15.5 million seed raise to further its precision fermentation cow-free dairy technology as well launch its alternative protein retail product, Love Buds.
GROWING GOALS
The latest forecast from IBISWorld is that revenue from alternative meat manufacturing in Australia will grow 29.9 per cent a year over the next five years to reach $424.4 million.
IBISWorld analyst Matt Reeves says plant-based meat companies are the only manufacturers in the alt-meat
RIGHT: Wide Open Agriculture’s regenerative farming ingredient and oat milk business is developing overseas markets.
sector currently generating revenue in Australia, with its revenue expected to reach $114.6 million in 2021-22, representing an estimated average annual growth of 50.4 per cent over the past five years.
At the time of launch founder and CEO Jan Pacas said, “Getting a premium product footing in the Asian market is a big priority for us. We’ll be looking to have another big funding raise, invest more in capex and scale up to fuel our overseas ambitions with a product ready for market in the next 12 months.”
New CEO of Fënn Foods Tony Rowlinson says while the Australian market is still in its infancy, based on global trends it will be a billion-dollar market in the very near future.
And companies building that
potential billion-dollar industry need money. The human capital required, combined with the type of equipment needed for producing plant-based proteins, or precision fermentation processes, or growing cultured meats, makes for an extremely expensive enterprise.
S2G Ventures managing director Chuck Templeton told the FFT audience that another trillion dollars’ worth of infrastructure was needed to meet existing demand. It’s worth remembering here that other tech industries are also operating with these kinds of
numbers, and we can’t eat them. “You don’t have to be an
Einstein to know that the solution to needing to double our food supply is not to produce twice the amount of lamb, beef, pork and chicken, just like it’s not the solution to have twice the number of cars for transport,” Pacas says.
V2food founder and CEO Nick Hazell says for domestic start-ups or companies, it is important to look at this as a global problem.
“It is an Australian problem, and there are 25 million of us, so that is a good market
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