Top headlines from APAC alt protein industry.
💰 Funding announcements
🔸
Next Gen Foods (Singapore): US$10m seed round for its plant-based chicken from
Temasek,
K3 Ventures, Singapore’s
Economic Development Board (EDB), German wholesaler
Metro’s NX-Food and others; the company claims it is the largest seed round ever for plant-based meat startup based on PitchBook data (
more)
🔸
CellMEAT (South Korea): US$4.5m (₩5 billion) pre-series A round for its cell-based meat technology led by
NAU IB Capital (
more)
🔸
Hero Protein (China): US$850k pre-seed round for its plant-based meat products from Germany-headquartered commodities and co-manufacturing company
Cremer, Lever VC China and others (
more)
🔸
Nourish Ingredients (Australia): US$11m (AU$14.4m) seed round for its plant-based fats from Hong Kong’s
Horizons Ventures and
Main Sequence Ventures (
more)
🔸
Green Rebel Foods (Indonesia), previously known as Green Butcher:
seed round (undisclosed amount) for its plant-based meat products led by
Unovis and
Teja Ventures (
more)
🔸
Australian Plant Proteins or
APP (Australia): US$35.4m (AU$45.7m) for plant protein isolate production in strategic minority investment from the US agri-food company
Bunge, which will also become the exclusive distributor for the Americas (
more)
🔸
Deliciou (Australia): seed round (undisclosed amount) for dehydrated, shelf-stable plant-based meats from
Stray Dog Capital and individual investors; the company is reportedly valued at US$50m (AU$65m) (
more)
🔸
Evo Foods (India)
: US$845k (Rs 6.2 crore) pre-seed round for its plant-based egg from
Sustainable Food Ventures,
Michiel Van Deursen (Capital V), members of the
Glasswall Syndicate and others (
more)
🆕 Product launches & expansion
🔸
Green Monday Group (Hong Kong) is expanding its
Omnipork/Omnimeat brand globally with soft launches in Japan (
more), the UK (
more) and the US (
more) as well as distributorship agreement in Australia with a focus on Asian and independent grocery stores (
more)
🔸
OmniPork Luncheon product from the same group has been rolled out in selected McDonald’s locations in Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen in mainland China; earlier the company launched the product as part of the breakfast menu at McDonald’s in Hong Kong (
more)
🔸
Next Gen Foods (Singapore) debuted its plant-based chicken under the brand
TiNDLE, starting with Singapore where it partnered with 11 restaurant brands for the launch; the company is planning to expand to more locations in APAC later this year (
more)
🔸
Eat Just partnered with
Foodpanda in Singapore for the world-first home delivery of cell-based chicken, available in limited quantities for ~US$15 (SG$20) plus a delivery fee (
more)
🔸
The Vegetarian Butcher, Unilever-owned company from the Netherlands, launched six new plant-based meat products for foodservice channel in mainland China (
more); the company is also providing a patty for Plant Based Whopper at Burger King in China at 325 locations and starting on May 5th in selected outlets in Greater Jakarta Area in Indonesia (
source)
🔸
v2food (Australia)
has been also working with Burger King in selected APAC markets on a plant-based patty for the Whopper; in the last months it launched in South Korea (
more) and Thailand (
more), previously landing similar deals with BK in the Philippines, Australia and New Zealand
🔸
Nestlé Malaysia launched a dairy-free version of chocolate malt beverage Milo and is expanding production of its Harvest Gourmet plant-based meat product line (
more)
🔸
Sophie Bionutrients (Singapore) shown what it claims to be the world’s first plant-based milk alternative made out of microalgae (
more) and a burger patty made from single-cell microalgae (
more)
🔸
Next Meats (Japan) launched its plant-based yakiniku meats in Singapore at Japanese restaurant chain Aburi-EN (
more)
🔸
Hao Foods, a startup from China rolled out its peanut-protein based chicken product at five restaurants in Shanghai (
more)
🏭 Manufacturing / R&D / partnerships
🔸
Avant (Hong Kong) announced it is establishing the “R&D and pilot manufacturing plant” in Singapore for cell-based seafood, supported by Singapore’s Economic Development Board (
more)
🔸
TurtleTree Scientific (Singapore), a spinoff of a cell-based milk startup
TurtleTree Labs, partnered
with
JSBiosciences (
more) and
Dyadic (
more) on the development of cell culture media
🔸
Beyond Meat opened its first end-to-end manufacturing facility outside of the US - in Jiaxing near Shanghai; the factory will produce a “range of plant-based pork, beef and poultry products, including Beyond Pork, created specifically for the Chinese market” (
more)
🔸
Oatly partnered with
Yeo Hiap Seng (
Yeo’s) to manufacture its products in Singapore; partners will jointly invest ~US$22.5m (SG$30m) in the facility with production starting in the second half of the year, with oat milk initially “earmarked for China and subsequently for the rest of Asia” (
more)
🔸
Bühler & Givaudan (both Swiss companies) opened a joint protein innovation centre in Singapore “outfitted with a pilot scale wet and dry extruder, a state-of-the-art product development kitchen” (
more)
🔸
ADM, another agri-food giant from the US, also opened “a plant-based innovation lab” in Singapore’s
Biopolis hub
(
more)
🔸
Blue Nalu, a cell-based seafood startup from the US, signed MoUs with Asian companies
Mitsubishi Corporation &
Thai Union (one of the world’s largest seafood players) focusing on market development “specifically in Asia, where there is high demand for quality seafood”;
Thai Union has been one of the investors in
Blue Nalu‘s latest US$60m Series B round (
more)
🗞️ Other news
🔸
Alternative Protein Council in Australia launched in March to “provide a collective voice for the sector”; founding members include Australian plant-based meat companies
Proform Foods,
v2food,
Rogue Foods, Sanitarium, along with
Nestlé Australia and
Impossible Foods (
more)
🔸
Impossible Foods cut wholesale prices in Singapore (
more) and Hong Kong (
more) by 20-30%, following a similar move in the US earlier, enabled by “tremendous growth and economies of scale”, as part of the long-term strategy to achieve price parity with animal-based meat (
more).