Grill’d, a barbecue burger restaurant with more than 150 stores in Australia and New Zealand , has launched a series of plant-based meat burgers starting on November 5. Many people who took the lead in tasting said, "It tastes no different from beef!"
It is understood that this plant meat burger called the Impossible series is provided by the American plant meat company Impossible Foods.
Grill’d official website related page screenshot
With the rapid growth of plant meat industry, and Impossible Foods has a leading position in this industry and enjoys a good reputation, this time Grill’d’s new product launch has attracted much attention in the Australian plant meat food market.
Some people in the catering industry believe that the launch of Grill'd chain of meat alternative burgers shows that more and more Australian diners are starting to choose a meatless or less meat diet due to dietary needs and environmental sustainability considerations. About 10% of Australians have eaten a plant-based diet, with the industry growing at 11% annually, higher than the overall growth rate of 2% in the food category.
The booming development of the plant meat industry has concerned traditional livestock farmers, who even requested the Senate committee for review to determine whether the use of the word "beef" by plant meat companies will have an adverse impact on Australian livestock industry.
In fact, the plant meat industry has developed rapidly not only in Australia, but also globally in recent years, making livestock feel threatened.
Solve world problems: People love to eat meat VS Natural resources are limited
There is a fact that must be admitted: most people love to eat meat. At the genetic level, people are "encoded" to a certain extent as foods that like high oil, fat and high protein.
Overall, people's demand for meat is increasing day by day. Take China as an example. The consumption of meat has increased from 10 kilograms per person per year 30 years ago to about 60 kilograms today. As the most popular place in the world to eat meat, Australia's per capita meat consumption per year is about 90 kilograms.
Even with the current population base, the earth will find it difficult for the earth to bear the annual demand for 7 billion people of 90 kilograms of meat.
In fact, animal husbandry and meat consumption have become one of the important factors that lead to the global warming of . According to a report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the annual emissions of greenhouse gas related to the animal husbandry supply chain total 7.1 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, accounting for 14.5% of the total emissions of human activities, which is comparable to the emissions of vehicles.
According to research by The Economist, global beef produces a year-on-year carbon dioxide emission equivalent, which is four times that of the entire nation of Japan. So much so that he sighed: Ordinary people want to be environmentally friendly, just eat less beef.
What is even more worrying is that the earth's population is still growing on a large scale. Some economists predict that the world population will increase to about 10 billion by 2050. The per capita arable land area is still severely shrinking, while the intensification of agricultural production is approaching its limit. How to feed so many people and meet people's needs for various types of food will become a global topic.
Traditional meat production industry-animal farming industry requires a large amount of natural resources, which leads to land degradation and soil loss problems becoming increasingly serious, and it is a major reason for water shortage. Among them, beef production consumes the largest amount.
According to Australian Federal Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) data, 12 kilograms of carbon dioxide is required for every kilogram of beef production, consuming 15,000 liters of water, and 326 square meters of land , which is 840 times, 11 times and 33 times that of 1 kilogram of soybean respectively.
In Australia, the fresh water required for producing beef far exceeds that of various plant foods. The amount of water required for various meats is also higher than that of plant foods.
Human meat-eating needs and the environment are overwhelmed, which has brought huge challenges to the global agriculture and meat industry, and exploring a more sustainable meat product production system has become the key.How to eat
more in line with ESG requirements?
In addition to this, the emergence of plant meat is also related to the trend of green and healthy eating.
Excessive meat intake is indeed likely to cause health burden. According to the World Health Organization report, more than 840% of the population over the world's 25-year-olds have been diagnosed with obesity, high cholesterol , hypertension and liver disease due to excessive unhealthy diet consumption. Regular consumption of plant protein products will greatly reduce the probability of such diseases.
Australia has serious problems in this regard. The relevant research report released by investment bank Credit Suisse in 2021 found that Australians ranks third from the bottom among 67 countries, mainly because they consume too much red meat and insufficient fruits, vegetables and grains.
report believes that replacing meat consumption with plant protein products will effectively improve Australians' health problems.
Globally, there are indeed more and more people, especially young people, who have begun to pursue the dietary structure of " zero fat, low calories, high protein" , and have begun to choose to intake high plant protein product , perform daily nutritional supplements and health management of , rather than meat.
Credit Suisse pointed out that the world is currently paying more and more attention to the development of corporate environment, society and governance (ESG), and whether investors, regulators, or consumers will be scrutinizing food manufacturers on ESG.
research believes that promoting sustainable development of agriculture, hard indicators for reducing carbon emissions in various countries, and alleviating health problems caused by dietary structure have caused inevitable changes in the food industry. Plant meat came into being to solve these problems.
Global capital "grabs the beach" of plant meat market
As the concept of environmental protection and health is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, the World Economic and Economic Food Organization predicts that the global plant protein consumption market will grow at an annualized rate of 19%, and the market size will develop from the current US$35.6 billion to exceed US$160 billion by 2030, achieving a market penetration rate of more than 10% in the global US$1.5 trillion food protein demand market.
Such a large market prospect has also attracted a lot of investment. In the third quarter of 2021, the global food technology industry attracted a total of $10.1 billion in venture capital (VC), bringing the total investment this year to $28.8 billion - an increase of 85% over 2020.
According to the latest research on emerging food technologies by investment data agency Pitchbook, capital has poured into the industry in large quantities with the increase in digitalization and the demand for sustainable development, and this surge is expected to continue next year.
Among them, many world-class capitals quickly turned their attention to the green and healthy plant protein food venture capital field, accelerating the capital layout in this area. The giants involved include: Google , Microsoft , SoftBank, Blackstone , UBS and other technology and investment giants.
is only in the protein food technology sub-field. The amount of venture capital investment is expected to reach US$5 billion in 2021, far exceeding the investment scale in 2019, which is almost equal to the total investment in the past 10 years.
Another plant meat giant wants to go public : Bill Gates, Li Ka-shing are shareholders!
In 2019, the skyrocketing of Beyond Meat, the world's "first stock in plant meat", brought the concept of plant meat into the public's vision.
Beyond Meat shines brightly on its first day of listing, with a 163% surge to set the best IPO record since the financial crisis. More than two months after its listing, Beyond Meat's stock price soared to US$239.71, up more than 9 times from the listing price of US$25 per share, with a market value reaching a maximum of US$15.1 billion.
According to US media reports, Beyond Meat's biggest competitor, the Impossible Foods mentioned above, is planned to go public through IPO in the next 12 months.
The latter broke through the technical barriers of Beyond Meat's poor taste and difficult to replicate the real meat product hemoglobin. It is the first company in the world to truly realize the addition of plant hemoglobin to plant protein meat products. Its molecular transformation technology broke through the industry bottleneck and was quickly recognized by the market.
Since its establishment, Impossible Foods has completed multiple rounds of financing, with major investors including Bill Gates , Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing , Google Ventures, Microsoft, Temasek , UBS, etc. It is worth mentioning that Bill Gates invested through his personal funds.
market data shows that Impossible Foods is currently valued at US$7 billion, is currently raising $500 million, and will have a post-investment valuation of US$7.5 billion. It is reported that this round of investment is only open to a few existing investors and the financing situation is enthusiastic.
The market generally believes that after the company goes public, its market value will exceed US$10 billion, and the growth of the food technology industry is expected to explode further in the future.
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