“We feel good about the relationship with Burger King,” says Impossible Foods CEO Peter McGuinness. “We feel good about our sales, the Impossible Whopper is important to us and it’s important to them, and we are working with them exploring other innovations.”
While the beleaguered plant-based meat company achieved positive free cash flow in the third quarter, it does not expect to sustain it in the fourth quarter.
With Beyond Meat mulling a restructure of its operations in China due to lackluster demand, we caught up with investor Tao Zhang to get his take on the alt protein market opportunity in China.
The plant-based protein market has been experiencing “destocking and consumer demand softness,” says ADM.
Moolec Science – a startup developing a molecular farming platform to produce plants that express animal proteins – has raised $30m from strategic investors via convertible notes.
When you’re on a tight budget, your execution must be “flawless,” says Juicy Marbles CEO Tilen Travnik. “If something is not as tight as it should be, it keeps me up at night because it immediately translates into cash flow.”
Counterintuitively, perhaps, for a technology that’s been around for decades, the extrusion process for transforming plant proteins into meat analogs remains something of a mystery, says Noa Weiss.
The ITC says there is “a reasonable indication” that Chinese companies are dumping subsidized pea protein in the US ‘at less than fair value.’
London-based startup Hoxton Farms has opened a pilot facility to make cultivated fat, the ‘magic ingredient that makes meat smell, brown, sizzle, and taste incredible…’
Given the “fragility of its financial situation and the weak consumption patterns in the meat alternatives category,” Beyond Meat faces an “existential threat,” say analysts at TD Cowen.
Alt meat startup Meati Foods has embarked on its second round of layoffs in three months but says its confidence in its long-term prospects remains ‘unwavering.’
Like everything else, food is political. But becoming embroiled in the culture war isn’t good for alt meat, says the CEO of Impossible Foods.
Alt protein startup ENOUGH has raised $43.6 m in a series C round led by World Fund CPT Capital to expand its mycoprotein business.
NotCo has exited the refrigerated plant-based milk segment in the US and is now focused on building its presence in the shelf-stable category.
Beyond Meat CEO Ethan Brown faced a grilling from analysts after posting a grim set of second quarter results and a reduced forecast for the full year.
San Francisco-based plant-based chicken startup Nowadays has ceased operations due to an inability to raise ventures funds in this market,” AgFunderNews has learned.
New York based LIVEKINDLY Collective (LKC) has expanded its plant-based portfolio with the acquisition of Glendale, California-based Alpha Foods.
Molecular farming startup IngredientWerks has genetically engineered corn crops to express high levels of bovine myoglobin in a process it claims can scale at a fraction of the cost of precision fermentation.
US retail sales of plant-based meat alternatives have continued to decline, falling 12.6% to $106.8m in the five weeks to July 2, with units down 19.8% year-over-year.
UK-based alt meat brand VFC has acquired distressed meat-free brand Meatless Farm, which laid off most of its staff earlier this month after a key investor expected to provide a capital injection backed out.
