Plant-Based Meat 20221-2031, a new report from IDTechEx, provides a comprehensive technical and industry evaluation of the faux meat market, based on extensive primary research into the sector. The report explores how plant-based meat alternative products are produced, the technical barriers involved, and the novel technologies emerging in the space.
The IDTechEx research delves into consumer and regulatory factors involved in shaping the market, as well as the key players in the industry and the investments raised.The report contains a ten-year region-based forecast for the future of the industry, predicting that the global plant-based faux meat market will be worth over $29 billion by 2031.
Sales of plant-based meat alternatives have grown sharply in recent years, buoyed by the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic’s disruption of meat supply chains and increasing scrutiny on the conventional meat sector. Reflecting this, investments into the plant-based meat industry have also risen rapidly, with the industry raising over $1.4 billion in 2020 alone. There is optimism that these trends will continue into 2021 and beyond, with plant-based meat looking increasingly set to disrupt the $1 trillion global meat industry.
Fake meat made from plants 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 throughout 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 faux 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 intake of same for health or environmental reasons. These consumers are less likely to sacrifice product quality and, as such, plant-based faux companies have increasingly invested into product research and development 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 optimized combinations of ingredients, while 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.
Nevertheless, the industry does still face challenges. Plant-based faux meat products generally remain more expensive than real meat counterparts, with cost reduction being a priority for producers. Further work into optimizing product quality is also necessary, particularly regarding plant-based analogs 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 labeling of plant-based meat alternatives, such as the recently proposed EU ban which threatened to ban producers of vegan dairy analogs from using milk cartons and yogurt pots to package their products, before it was dropped in May of 2021.
Despite these challenges, the plant-based alternative meat industry is continuing to grow rapidly and many in the industry are optimistic about the future. For more information, contact research@IDTechEx.com or visit www.IDTechEx.com.
