2023 was a tough 12 months for plant-based meat. With Past Meat, one in every of its greatest manufacturers, seeing a falling share worth, and a variety of companies going into administration, the marketplace for plant-based meat analogues isn’t an unqualified success story.
Nonetheless, UK-based plant-based model VFC just isn’t shrinking, however rising. Utilizing its acquisitions to bolster its dimension, it hopes to broaden its attain within the business.
A rising community
VFC, or ‘Vegan Fried Chick*n’, is now not only a plant-based rooster model. The corporate is now Vegan Meals Group, or VFG, and goals to broaden with additional plant-based acquisitions.
“VFG will probably be centered on enterprise; rising organically and thru acquisition,” VFC co-founder Matthew Glover instructed FoodNavigator. “We’ll solely be investing in start-ups as a part of our M&A technique, however not within the typical VC sense.”
Up to now, the Vegan Meals Group contains Meatless Farm, which sells plant-based merchandise together with vegan mince, vegan burgers and vegan steak and which VFC rescued from administration final 12 months; and Clive’s Purely Crops, which produces plant-based pastry merchandise corresponding to pies, ‘sausagey rolls,’ and quiches.
The corporate’s new rebranding suggests a need to broaden. This might, ought to success enable, imply going international. “We’ll be primarily based within the UK and EU within the quick time period, in order that’s the place our major focus will probably be. However, a few of our manufacturers already export to areas just like the Center East and Australia so we’ll hold an open thoughts usually about worldwide enlargement ought to it make monetary and strategic sense,” Glover instructed us.
Glover, who additionally heads up Veg Capital and is the co-founder of the Veganuary marketing campaign, will tackle the function of ‘Chief Mission Officer’ for the newly rebranded firm. “I’ll be concerned extra in a strategic function as Group Chair of the Board, supporting the CEO Dave Sparrow, and dealing with head of promoting Alison Reilly to plan the general model path for the Group and particular person manufacturers underneath the VFG umbrella.
“With the necessity for consolidation I’ll even be closely concerned in discussions with firms, and analysing which alternatives make most sense for VFG.”
Glover has excessive goals for the corporate, saying that he hopes it’s going to sooner or later turn into a ‘vegan Unilever.’ We requested him if such a comparability may ever imply an enlargement past the meals sector totally.
“We’ll be specializing in meals in the meanwhile, as 99% of animals exploited on the planet are within the meals sector. In the long run, there could possibly be alternatives in cosmetics (or) supplies, for instance vegan leather-based, however that’s not in our instant ideas,” he instructed us.
