More than 5,000 companies end up in fierce battle, is the plant meat market "real fragrant"
Author: Liu Xiaoying
There are two problems with vegetable meat to be solved, one is cost performance, and the other is taste and texture.
Nowadays, the zongzi for the Dragon Boat Festival is the same as the Qingming Festival and the moon cakes for the Mid-Autumn Festival. There are many things in the business, and there are often unexpected tastes.
"Foodie" Qian Yijia ate plant-based zongzi for the first time on the Dragon Boat Festival this year. There is a whole piece of "pork belly" in the zongzi, which looks vivid.
The supplier of "Pork Belly" is a local Chinese company called New Vegetarian.
This local startup company announced in September last year that it had received tens of millions of yuan in Pre A round of financing, led by Jingwei China, and the old shareholder Shengmei Qiming followed the investment.
The company's investors said in an external press release, "We are optimistic about the broad track of subverting traditional protein supply based on alternative protein for a long time."
The domestic plant meat market has been in force for nearly a year.
Before eating plant-meat dumplings, Qian Yijia bought vegetarian meat buns in Songyuelou, a long-established vegetarian restaurant in Shanghai. The taste is difficult to distinguish from ordinary meat buns.
Even more surprising is the price, 4.5 yuan per piece, which broke her preconceived impression that "plant meat is more expensive than real meat".
She has also seen plant-meat dumplings, spring rolls, and steamed buns in Carrefour; she saw plant-meat panini and pasta sold in the whole family, which can be eaten by heating in a microwave oven for one person.
Nowadays, plant-based meat is not a new term for consumers, and plant-based meat companies like Xin Vegetarian are not uncommon in China.
An industry source told CBN that as far as he knows, there are at least 5,000 "players" on this domestic track, but "many of them are small and medium-sized companies."
These "players" include both traditional agri-food companies and emerging start-up companies, as well as multinational companies and local companies.
"There are a lot of mixed fish and dragons. Some are making traditional soy products, and they will also say that they are making plant meat. Anyway, there are no leading companies and leading companies. Everyone is testing the water and hoping to make a breakthrough. But this market is big. of."
From "heard of" to "buy"
What is plant meat?
It belongs to a kind of "artificial meat".
Strictly speaking, artificial meat is divided into two types: the first type of plant meat is processed by extracting plant protein from soybeans, peas, wheat and other crops to make it have the taste and texture of animal meat products.
The second type is "test tube meat" and "cell meat", which are made by extracting and cultivating animal stem cells in the laboratory.
At present, the products on the market are basically plant meat.
A few years ago, plant meat seemed to be a new and unfamiliar term to most Chinese people.
People see news reports about plant meat, but in actual life it is difficult to find one or two.
This emerging product from overseas has attracted much attention because of its association with the names of big names such as Bill Gates and Li Ka-shing, and has also become a hot spot for capital pursuit.
The "high light moment" of plant meat is in 2019.
At that time, Beyond Meat, an artificial meat company based in Los Angeles, landed on Nasdaq, its first day of listing rose by as much as 163%, setting a record for the best IPO in US stocks since the financial crisis, with a cumulative increase of 290% in less than one month of listing.
The other Impossible Foods, also from California, has a valuation of more than $10 billion before it goes public.
Some of the products Qian Yijia saw came from the brand Zhi Ai Life founded by Chen Shuguang.
During 2017-2018, the Chinese Singaporean had contact with the American non-profit organization The Good Food Institute (GFI), which was committed to promoting the development of more environmentally friendly alternatives to animal protein.
As a Singaporean, Chen Shuguang’s hometown is a country that may "disappear" as the sea level rises, so he has the idea of entering the field of plant alternative protein.
Even though most plant meat companies currently enter the market from the B-end, consumer education and publicity at the C-end are also very important.
Ye Qingliang, vice president of Zhiai Life's business, told China Business News that unlike some other plant meat companies that only do the 2B market, Zhi Ai Life began to deploy retail channels last year.
In terms of channel selection, the brand covers the three core channels of online retail (e-commerce), offline retail and catering.
Among them, the choice of e-commerce channels not only covers traditional platforms such as Tmall supermarket and JD supermarket, but also deploys emerging O2O platforms such as Hema, Dingdong, Liangxian, etc.; at the same time, it also enters RT-Mart, Auchan, Carrefour, Jiuguang Fresh Store, There are more than 1,000 supermarket stores such as Takashimaya and G-Super.
In his view, this can be more direct to consumers and quickly open the market.
"We are not replacing meat. We just hope that consumers can have more choices." Zhi Ai Life CEO Chen Ruirong said that the target audience of the brand is aimed at those "flexible vegetarians."
The so-called flexitarianism has no definite rules. The basic idea is to consume more vegetables, whole grains, beans, nuts and rapeseeds, and reduce the intake of animal foods, such as meat, poultry and dairy products. .
The market behind this is huge. Compared to 70 million vegetarians, it is a market with more than one billion people.
The data also confirms that this is indeed a big cake worthy of full mining.
Still in the market education stage
According to previous forecasts by MarketsandMarkets, a US market research and consulting company, the global plant-based meat market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of approximately 15.0%, reaching US$27.9 billion (approximately 179 billion yuan) by 2025.
Among them, the Chinese market has the fastest growth rate.
According to Euromonitor's forecast, China's vegetable meat market will reach 13 billion U.S. dollars by 2023.
In the eyes of many people in the industry, compared with Western countries, China is the best market for plant meat. China has a rich variety of food and beverages, diverse cooking methods, and has a long vegetarian tradition.
Chen Ruirong found that the 2020 epidemic has promoted the health needs of Chinese consumers.
He and his team have noticed a market trend, that is, plant-based meat has become popular among young people in many first-tier cities in China for a variety of reasons ranging from healthy diet to environmental protection.
The new crown epidemic has promoted the retail of plant meat products as a whole.
For example, Impossible Foods' retail footprint has grown from 150 retail locations to as many as 20,000 worldwide, which is the "largest business expansion" in its 10-year history of development.
According to the report "Insights on China's Artificial Meat Trends in 2020" issued by market research agency Ipsos, some consumers have begun to reduce their purchases of meat products due to the impact of the epidemic, and 21% of consumers intend to substitute other protein for animal meat products. .
Overseas companies are waiting for opportunities.
In early April 2020, Beyond Meat announced the official opening of its plant meat production plant in the Jiaxing Economic and Technological Development Zone in Zhejiang Province. The plant is mainly responsible for the production of plant pork, beef and poultry products.
Catering giants have also followed up.
Starbucks quickly launched Beyond Meat's plant-based meat products last year.
Fast food chain McDonald’s launched a series of plant-based breakfast meat products in March this year; in April, McDonald’s old rival KFC launched plant-based fried chicken nuggets.
Domestic catering chain companies are also not to be outdone. For example, Haidilao announced in March that 31 stores in Shanghai have begun to implement small-scale product updates on a trial basis, providing new plant-based protein products "Taste Mate" as matching ingredients.
This is also Haidilao's first market-oriented plant protein product.
In addition, Haidilao said that it will continue to launch more than 10 plant protein products, and it is expected that a series of plant protein hot pot ingredients will be on the market at the end of June.
However, although the "players" have begun to increase their weight, many practitioners still believe that this industry is still in its early stages and the market needs to be developed and cultivated.
Gao Song, the founder and CEO of the new vegetarian diet, previously mentioned in a forum at the 22nd China International Food and Beverage Exhibition (SIAL China), “Why do consumers not accept plant meat or the evaluation is not so high? The core is in the industry. In the early days, there was a lack of good products and a lack of a stable and mature supply chain."
The prospect of plant meat is still promising.
Favorable policies are also constantly being introduced.
In December 2020, the Chinese Society for Food Science and Technology issued the "Plant-based Meat Products" group standard, which stipulates the basic requirements, inspection rules, determination rules, packaging, transportation and storage of plant-based meat products, which signifies that the plant-based meat industry has National industry standards and safety guarantees have also been improved accordingly.
Chen Ruirong said that the promulgation of industry standards clarified what real plant meat is, which is conducive to the healthy development of this industry.
He also agrees that the plant meat market is still in its cultivation period, and domestic plant meat companies need to solve two problems, one is cost-effectiveness, and the other is technology, that is, taste and texture.
“A hamburger made of imported (artificial) meat sells for more than 60 yuan, which is more expensive than real meat. Some people may try to try new ones because of curiosity, but the repurchase rate will definitely not be high.” He said that only to solve these two problems, Only plant meat can be popularized in the country, and it will take time.