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The following content is sponsored by The Very Good Food Company
Plant-based foods are gaining traction—and fast.
By 2030, the global plant-based food market is expected to reach $161.9 billion in value. That’s a 355% increase compared to 2021.
Interested in investing in this rapidly expanding industry? This graphic from The Very Good Food Company (VGFC) highlights what you should know on the future of the plant-based food market.
As plant-based foods grow in popularity and more product options become available, consumers have started to become more selective about the types of products they’re willing to purchase.
For many consumers, health is a key consideration when making purchasing decisions. A global survey revealed that, out of 8,500 respondents, over 50% were vegan for health reasons.
But not just any plant-based product will cut it. Consumers are starting to hold businesses to a higher standard, with an expectation that plant-based products have high nutritional value, low salt content, and good quality protein.
Consumers are also becoming more educated on environmental issues, and how plant-based diets can help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. According to the same survey as above, almost two-thirds (64%) of respondents were vegan for environmental and sustainability reasons.
Some experts believe this figure will only increase, as the impacts of climate change become more apparent across the globe.
With consumer demand growing and expectations for the plant-based food industry evolving, new technological advancements in this space are rapidly emerging.
For instance, the cell-cultured meat market is gaining traction fast. Cell-culture meat is meat that’s grown in a lab from the cells of animals. It’s biologically identical to traditional meat.
While cell-cultured meat has yet to hit the commercial market on a mass scale, several start-ups have gone public, such as MeaTech3D, Mosa Meat, and UPSIDE Foods. Recently, MeaTech announced its plans to start pre-production of cell-cultured chicken fat by 2022.
In the next 20 years, cell-cultured meat usage is expected to skyrocket. In fact, it could make up 35% of the global meat market by 2040, which would cause conventional meat’s market share to decrease drastically.
In addition to meat alternatives, other plant-based alternatives are gaining popularity as well, especially egg substitutes and spreads. In 2020, plant-based egg sales in the U.S. reached $27 million, a 167.8% increase compared to the year prior.
While egg substitutes and spreads are growing fast, plant-based milk remains the most popular product category when it comes to overall sales, making up 35% of the total plant-based foods market.
Retailers are starting to take note of the rising popularity of plant-based products, and are integrating plant-based foods into their offerings as a result.
For example, Tesco, the UK’s biggest grocery store brand, expects to see sales of plant-based products grow 300% by 2025. And Unilever, one of the world’s largest food and beverage manufacturers, expects to generate $1.2 billion from plant-based meat and dairy sales in the next five to seven years—around 5x more than their 2020 sales revenue for alternatives.
Since the market is booming, many plant-based food companies are experiencing significant growth. For instance, The Very Good Food Company, a Canadian plant-based food company, saw its revenue increase by 680% from Q1 2020 to Q1 2021.
In that same timeframe, VGFC’s product sales increased by 77%, and its eCommerce sales increased by 1744%. More growth is on the horizon since the company recently closed a $70 million loan agreement with Waygar Capital and Ninepoint Partners to help expand operations.
Not everyone is transitioning to a fully plant-based lifestyle.
As the benefits of plant-based diets become more apparent, more people are starting to limit their meat intake, or have become flexitarians—people who primarily eat a plant-based diet, but occasionally eat meat or fish.
In fact, almost one-third of Americans have reduced their meat and dairy consumption, and consider themselves flexitarians.
Being a flexitarian is becoming easier than ever, as plant-based products become more accessible, and the taste of meat alternatives improves.
Because of consumer demand, restaurants are adjusting and creating more inclusive menus with diverse vegan, vegetarian, and dairy-free options for their guests.
A&W, a popular Canadian fast-food chain, launched its plant-based burger back in 2018. Because of its popularity, the restaurant is expanding its plant-based menu options by adding Beyond Meat nuggets to the menu.
The plant-based movement has been largely driven by younger generations.
In a survey of over 1,200 respondents, 22% of Millennials said they’d adopted a vegetarian lifestyle at some point in their lives, compared to just 13% of Gen Xers, and 11% of Baby Boomers.
And many Millennials, even if they haven’t gone full plant-based, were attempting to limit their meat intake—45% of Millennial respondents claimed they were actively trying to reduce their meat consumption.
Gen Z however are the driving force behind the plant-based movement with 79% of them claiming to eat plant-based once or twice per week.
Independent businesses aren’t the only players getting behind the plant-based boom—governments are stepping up to support this rapidly growing industry as well.
For example, the Canadian government recently announced plans to invest $150 million in the plant-based foods industry, signing a deal with Protein Industries Canada. This funding will go towards plant-based food manufacturing, research and development, and tech innovation.
There are multiple drivers supporting the rapidly growing plant-based food industry, and because of this, more growth is expected in the near future.
Companies like VGFC are at the forefront of this movement, providing products that don’t sacrifice taste and aren’t highly processed.
Click here to learn more about the VGFC and their wide array of product offerings.
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The U.S. alone generates ∼12 million tons of asphalt shingles tear-off waste and installation scrap every year and more than 90% of it is dumped into landfills.
Asphalt, also known as bitumen, has various applications in the modern economy, with annual demand reaching 110 million tons globally.
Until the 20th century, natural asphalt made from decomposed plants accounted for the majority of asphalt production. Today, most asphalt is refined from crude oil.
This graphic, sponsored by Northstar Clean Technologies, shows how new technologies to reuse and recycle asphalt can help protect the environment.
Pollution from vehicles is expected to decline as electric vehicles replace internal combustion engines.
But pollution from asphalt could actually increase in the next decades because of rising temperatures in some parts of the Earth. When subjected to extreme temperatures, asphalt releases harmful greenhouse gases (GHG) into the atmosphere.
Asphalt paved surfaces and roofs make up approximately 45% and 20% of surfaces in U.S. cities, respectively. Furthermore, 75% of single-family detached homes in Canada and the U.S. have asphalt shingles on their roofs.
Similar to roads, asphalt shingles have oil as the primary component, which is especially harmful to the environment.
Shingles do not decompose or biodegrade. The U.S. alone generates ∼12 million tons of asphalt shingles tear-off waste and installation scrap every year and more than 90% of it is dumped into landfills, the equivalent of 20 million barrels of oil.
But most of it can be reused, rather than taking up valuable landfill space.
Using technology, the primary components in shingles can be repurposed into liquid asphalt, aggregate, and fiber, for use in road construction, embankments, and new shingles.
Providing the construction industry with clean, sustainable processing solutions is also a big business opportunity. Canada alone is a $1.3 billion market for recovering and reprocessing shingles.
Northstar Clean Technologies is the only public company that repurposes 99% of asphalt shingles components that otherwise go to landfills.
Cultured meat could become a $25 billion market by 2030, but investment into the technologies that underpin the industry is required.
Cultured foods—also known as cell-based foods—are expected to turn our global food system as we know it on its head.
In fact, the cultured meat market is estimated to reach an eye-watering $25 billion by 2030 according to McKinsey, but only if it can overcome hurdles such as price parity and consumer acceptance. To do so, significant innovation in the science behind these products will be crucial for the industry’s growth.
In the graphic above from our sponsor CULT Food Science, we provide a visual overview of some of the technologies behind the creation of cultured meat products.
To start, cultured meat is defined as a genuine animal meat product that is created by cultivating animal cells in a controlled lab environment—eliminating the need to farm animals for food almost entirely.
“Cultured meat has all the same fat, muscles, and tendons as any animal…All this can be done with little or no greenhouse gas emissions, aside from the electricity you need to power the land where the process is done.” —Bill Gates
Because cultured meat is made of the same cell types and structure found in animal tissue, the sensory and nutritional profiles are like-for-like. Let’s dive into how these products are made.
The main challenge facing the cultured meat market is producing products at scale. But thanks to the vast amount of research in the stem cell biology space, the science behind cultured foods is not entirely new.
Given that we are in the very early days of applying these learnings to producing food products, those looking to invest in companies contributing to the industry’s growth stand to benefit. Here is an overview of some of the technologies that underpin the industry that you should know:
This is the process of using living cells and their components to create new products. According to experts like the Good Food Institute, bioprocess design holds the key to unlocking cultured meat production at scale.
Specifically, innovation in bioreactor (where the cells grow) design represents a massive opportunity for companies and investors alike.
Tissue engineering techniques are used to produce cultured meat that resembles real meat textures and flavors. The first step is taking tissue from the animal for the purpose of extracting stem cells and creating cell lines.
The extracted stem cell lines are then cultivated in a nutrient rich environment, mimicking in-animal tissue growth and producing muscle fibers inside a bioreactor. The muscle fibers are processed and mixed with additional fats and ingredients to assemble the finished meat product.
Cell lines refer to the different types of cells that can be propagated repeatedly and sometimes indefinitely.
Access to cell lines is a major challenge facing the industry today and is an area that requires significantly more research. This is because there is not just one cell type that can be used in cellular agriculture to produce cultured food products.
Cells (or cell cultures) require very specific environmental conditions. Cell culture media is a gel or liquid that contains the nutrients needed to support growth outside of the body.
More research in this space is needed to determine optimized formulations and make these products more affordable.
Scaffolds are 3D cell culture platforms that mimic the structure of complex biological tissues, such as skeletal muscle. This platforms can be created through the use of 3D Bioprinting.
Scaffolds are predominantly made up of collagen and gelatin. The problem is these are both animal-derived ingredients which defeats the purpose of cell-based products. Therefore, more sustainable plant-derived options are also being explored.
CULT Food Science is an innovative investment platform advancing the technology behind the future of food with an exclusive focus on cultured meat, cultured dairy, and cell-based foods.
The company’s global portfolio spans four continents and includes exposure to a diverse pipeline:
>>>Want to stay updated? Click here to subscribe to the CULT Food Science mailing list.
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