Good News Notes:
“Milo chocolate milk has been hugely popular in Southeast Asia for decades. Now the breakfast and teatime favorite is about to get shaken up — the cocoa powder will be offered as a dairy-free, ready-made beverage.
The product is one of Nestlé’s newest plant-based inventions, and it will be launched in the region this week, the company told CNN Business. Starting Thursday, the drink will hit supermarkets in Malaysia, and the Swiss multinational plans to sell it in other countries soon. (The company already offers plant-based Milo in Australia and New Zealand, but in the traditional powder form.)
“We are all about giving choices,” Juan Aranols, Nestlé’s Malaysia and Singapore chief, said in an interview. “We felt that with this growing interest for plant-based products, why not give the Milo taste everybody loves in a solution that is plant-based?”
Traditionally, Milo is made of cocoa, malt extract and skimmed milk, while the plant-based version swaps out milk powder for soy and oats. The move is the latest example of businesses taking the plant-based trend to Asia.
In recent years, Western brands including Nestlé (NSRGY), Impossible and Beyond Meat (BYND) havetapped into a growing appetite for such food and drinks in the West. Now, they’re headed east, raising fresh funding to target growth in the region, rolling out products specifically created for Asian consumers and setting up new factories on the ground.
Plant-based food is already popular in parts of Asia but its gaining new fans for a variety of reasons, from customers wanting to adopt a healthier diet, to concerns about the impact of meat on the environment.
Some consumers simply want in on a hot new trend, while many younger meat-eaters want to become “flexitarians” — people who choose to forgo meat one or two days a week. For food and beverage companies, this translates into a $25 billion plus opportunity in the region.
“The tide is turning,” declared David Yeung, the founder of Green Monday, one of the few widely recognized homegrown players in Asia. The Hong Kong-based startup uses shiitake mushrooms, peas, soy and rice to make its “OmniPork” product.
“Finally, the whole concept of alternative protein, alternative dairy is becoming more mainstream,” he told CNN Business.
Plant-based fever
When Yeung started his business in 2012, many Asians believed a vegetarian diet meant eating “salad, or just tofu, tofu, tofu,” he said.
“As recent as three years ago, when we used to pitch this to supermarkets, they were like, ‘This is not going to sell. What is this?’ There was no track record,” he said. “Now people say, ‘Oh, plant-based is so prevalent in Hong Kong.'”
Walk into a Starbucks (SBUX) in mainland China and chances are you’ll see Green Monday’s OmniPork or its US partner, Beyond Meat, on the menu. The Hong Kong upstart has raised over $100 million to date, from investors including celebrities such as James Cameron and Bono.
Beyond Meat has also made a splash by teaming up with other players in China, including Alibaba (BABA) and Yum China (YUMC), the local owner of KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut, while unveiling a meatless minced “pork” designed just for Chinese consumers. On Wednesday, it marked another milestone with the opening of a new manufacturing facility near Shanghai.
Beyond Meat isn’t the only company tailoring its approach to the local market. Last year, Nestlé set up its first factory for plant-based products in Asia, as part of a 730 million yuan ($111.5 million) investment. The facility, which is located in the Chinese port city of Tianjin, has since launched a line of meatless burgers, sausages and nuggets, as well as its own twist on Chinese specialties, such as kung pao chicken, pork belly and braised meatballs.
In Hong Kong and Singapore, Impossible says it has doubled the number of restaurants that sell its products, even during the coronavirus pandemic. The California-based firm raised half a billion dollars last year, mostly from heavyweight investors in Asia.
Data points to a steady climb in regional demand over the last few years. As of 2020, the industries for meat and milk substitutes in Asia Pacific were worth a combined $25.6 billion, up from $21.5 billion five years prior, according to market research provider Euromonitor International.
The Singaporean government has also seized on the trend, giving companies further incentive. “We see the growing demand for alternative protein … as an opportunity that would enhance the world’s food security,” according to Johnny Teo, executive director for food, healthcare and biomedical at Enterprise Singapore, an official agency focused on business development in the city-state.
To that end, the government is taking steps to drive growth in the space by investing in startups and committing at least 144 million Singapore dollars ($107 million) to areas including alternative protein, he wrote in ablog post last year.
China, too, has set goals to cut down its meat consumption. In 2016, the Chinese Nutrition Society published dietary guidelines that suggested people eat 40 to 75 grams of meat per day, slightly less than the 50 to 75 grams of recommended daily consumption in 2007. The guidelines are released by the group — which is affiliated with but not run by the government — once every decade.
“There’s been a revolution in this sector,” Impossible Foods President Dennis Woodside said in an interview with CNN Business. “We’re seeing that play out in Asia — across Asia — in particular….”
View the whole story here: https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/04/07/business/plant-based-food-drink-asia-intl-hnk/index.html