Plant-Based Meat 2021-2031

In its current form, the global meat industry is unsustainable. It is an inefficient method of producing food that could soon be unable to adequately feed the growing global population, estimated to reach 10 billion by the year 2050. Meat production is also damaging to the environment, contributing to greenhouse gas emissions, dwindling water supplies and environmental pollution.

 

Plant-based meat, meat-like products created from plant proteins could be part of the solution, creating a viable alternative to conventional meat. Sales of plant-based meat products have surged over the last few years, spurred on by increasing consumer awareness around the issues associated with the meat industry and a new generation of realistic plant-based analogues led by Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods. COVID-19 led to a rapid rise in sales in 2020, following disruptions to meat supply chains and growing consumer awareness of the issues facing the meat industry, and the future has never looked brighter for the plant-based meat market. Plant-based meat 2021-2031, a new report from IDTechEx, explores the technical and commercial factors that are shaping the emerging plant-based meat market.

 

Plant-based meat is not a new concept; tofu and seitan have been around for millennia and meat alternative brands such as Quorn and Tofurky have been in stores around the world for decades. However, until recently, these products were primarily targeted at vegetarians, who may have been happy to compromise on quality for ethical or environmental reasons. The most recent generation of plant-based meat products, such as the Beyond Burger and Impossible Burger have aimed to change this, targeting the 95% of consumers who eat meat, but are looking to cut down consumption for health or environmental reasons. These consumers are less likely to sacrifice product quality and, as such, plant-based meat companies have increasingly invested into product R&D to create new plant-based meat products that are almost exact replicas of the real thing.

 

R&D has been accelerated by advances in production technology, such as the twin-screw extrusion technology pioneered by Gardein in the early 2000s, and companies are increasingly looking to emerging technologies to help develop the next generation of plant-based products. Chilean start-up NotCo is employing AI technology to find optimised combinations of ingredients, Israeli company Redefine Meat is using 3D printing technology to create structured plant-based meat products like steaks, and California-based Eat Just used high-throughput screening techniques to find combinations of plant proteins that suit different foods, such as the company's mung bean-based egg substitute.

 

In recent years, investments into the plant-based meat industry have also grown quickly, with over $1.4 billion being raised in funding in 2020 alone. The wider food industry is reacting to this, with companies like Unilever and Nestlé releasing their own plant-based meat brands, and meat companies such as Tyson, JBS, and Perdue acquiring plant-based brands and beginning to rebrand themselves as "protein companies".

 

Nevertheless, the industry does still face challenges that threaten its goal of disrupting the $1 trillion global meat industry. Plant-based meat products generally remain more expensive than their conventional meat counterparts, with cost reduction being a priority for the industry. Further work into optimising product quality is also necessary, particularly regarding plant-based analogues to structured meat products such as steaks and chicken breasts. Finally, the industry has faced resistance from the conventional meat industry, which has pushed regulators to place restrictions on the labelling of plant-based meat products, such as the recently proposed EU ban which threatened to ban producers of vegan dairy analogues from using milk cartons and yoghurt pots to package their products, before it was dropped in May 2021.

 

Despite these challenges, the plant-based meat industry is continuing to grow rapidly and many in the industry are optimistic about the future. Plant-based Meat 2021-2031 provides a comprehensive technical and industry evaluation of the plant-based meat market, based on extensive primary research into the sector. The report explores how plant-based meat is produced, the technical barriers involved, and the novel technologies emerging in the space. It also discusses the consumer and regulatory factors involved in shaping the plant-based meat market, as well as the key players in the industry and the investments raised. Finally, the report contains a ten-year region-based market forecast for the future of the plant-based meat industry, predicting that the global plant-based meat market will be worth over $29 billion by 2031.

 

 

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