Nearly 50 of the world’s largest food manufacturing companies have invested in the production of plant-based or cell-cultured meats.
The size of this “alternative meat” industry is shown in an article in Just Food, which lists the companies, their subsidiaries and their products.
“The rise of plant-based products and the arrival of cell-cultured options as meat alternatives are trends very much on the radar of the world’s largest meat companies,” Just Food says.
Their list of companies in the new industry includes huge meat and food producers in Brazil, Europe, the United States, Canada and Japan. Among them are multinationals such as Unilever and Nestlé, Brazil’s biggest meat producers, JBS and BRF, and the Tyson Foods giant in the US.
Also named is South Africa’s RCL Foods, former owner of Rainbow, South Africa’s second largest poultry producer. RCL acquired a minority stake in the Livekindly Collective, which has South Africa-based business The Fry Family Food Co. in its portfolio, the article says.
Most of the companies named are producing, or looking to produce, beef alternatives for hamburgers or sausages. However, a few also focus on poultry.
PHW-Gruppe, one of Europe’s largest poultry producers, has provided financing for an Israeli company that produces meat by growing cells extracted from chickens. Nestlé has partnered with another Israeli startup looking to produce cultured meat.
A Japanese company, IntegriCulture, announced in 2021 that it had produced the world’s first cell-cultured foie gras – a delicacy made from duck liver.
The plant-based meat industry has suffered some setbacks along the way, with closures and consolidation as companies battled to produce plant-based products with the texture and taste of real meat, and at a competitive price. In 2022, consultancy Deloitte said US sales of plant-based meat were “stagnating”.
Earlier this year, Steve Murrels, CEO of the UK-based Hilton Food Group, said the company had “started to rightsize” its meat alternatives business.
“Two of the reasons why I think there’s a global resetting in this marketplace was around how do we make it more affordable for more people and how do we improve the experience around taste and flavour,” he told Just Foods.
Beef and poultry producers will be watching these developments carefully, but not yet fearfully.
