From September 9 to 10, a reporter from the "Daily Economic News" visited the planned construction site of the Beyond Meat China factory in Jiaxing, Zhejiang. According to relevant personnel from Jiaxing Economic Development Zone, the two factories will be built in Majiabang Heal

Majiabang Healthy Food Town Planning Picture source: Zhang Yun, reporter of Meike

According to the overall plan of the town, the production area of ​​healthy food is divided into two areas, and the production factory and R&D center of a different meat customer will be located here. On September 8, Beyond Meat CEO and Founder Ethan Brown said that after several months of fruitful cooperative discussion, two production implementations will be developed with Jiaxing Economic and Technological Development Zone, one of which will be one of the world's largest and most technologically advanced plant meat production facilities.

However, the reporter visited the functional area all the way and found no other construction site for the meat customers. The reporter came to the company registration point on the second floor of the town's living room, but did not find any other meat customer staff working here.

Beyond Meat's wholly-owned subsidiary, Bianyi (Jiaxing) Food Co., Ltd., the registered address of the second floor interior view

Picture source: reporter Zhang Yun of Meijing

The receptionist of the town management committee working on this floor said that the project started contacting last year and was registered in the town in April this year, but the epidemic has affected the negotiation progress. At present, the plant meat project factory has not started yet and is still doing preliminary preparations. For specific details, please ask the Economic Development Zone Management Committee.

The reporter then went to the Jiaxing Economic and Technological Development Zone Management Committee to learn that the project was signed at the 6th International Economic and Trade Negotiation Conference held by the Economic and Technological Development Zone on September 8, but since it is still under in-depth negotiations, the relevant details will be disclosed in the future.

Beyond Meat China factory is located in an undeveloped plot where the planned location of the planned construction site

Picture source: Zhang Yun, reporter of Meike

In fact, in the financial report released by Beyond Meat in August, the company also mentioned the development progress of its global production facilities. As of the end of June, the company not only has its own factories and OEM factories in the United States, but also has joint manufacturers in several locations in Canada and the Netherlands. In the first half of this year, Beyond Meat registered a subsidiary in the Netherlands and China respectively, and acquired a Dutch manufacturing plant in the second quarter.

"And the company's expansion plans also include increasing international customers and conducting international expansion. In the second quarter of this year, the company announced several new partnerships in China and is also exploring the addition of partners and production facilities overseas (including Asia), but due to the impact of the epidemic, it may hinder the progress of international expansion." Beyond Meat said in its second quarter financial report.

From the news perspective, Beyond Meat's pace of increasing its investment in the Chinese market is becoming more and more compact. Now in China, consumers can already taste the "Beyond Meat" brand plant meat products in catering and retail channels such as Starbucks, Metro, Hema. Previously, Beyond Meat also launched limited-time products in KFC, Pizza Hut and Tacobell to solicit consumer feedback.

and building a factory in Jiaxing also means that Beyond Meat will move from sales to production in China. According to information officially released by Beyond Meat, the project is expected to start trial production within a few months and will be fully put into production at the beginning of 2021. As a production and R&D center and also as a major market in the future, China is expected to become one of the most important markets in the world at Beyond Meat.

The concept of plant meat is very popular. The domestic market is still in the "tasting" stage.

Nowadays, Beyond Meat is the first to enter the mainland Chinese market compared to Impossible Foods, which is also in the budding period of the accelerated development of the plant meat market and has a first-mover advantage.

Chinese food industry analyst Zhu Danpeng believes that the entry of multinational companies will force Chinese plant meat companies to innovate, upgrade and iterate, and play a role in promoting the five major ports: policy, capital, industrial, channel and consumer.

In 2019, the concept of plant meat has set off a craze in the domestic market. As the three traditional Chinese vegetarian meat companies, Ningbo Sulian, Shenzhen Qishan, and Jiangsu Hongchang, entered the transformation period, not only did Chinese start-up brands such as Xingjijiezhen and Hey Maet, which had just received a new round of financing, poured into the plant meat track, but also food and beverage companies such as Jinzi Ham, Shuangta Food, Baicaowei, and Naixue seek cooperation in the industry to gain a foothold. In fact, raw material supplier Cargill has expanded from the B-end to the C-end, and launched its own plant meat brand "Zhiqi" in July this year. Among the listed companies of

, Shuangta Food has occupied a seat among several global suppliers of Beyond Meat pea protein. Its biofermentation process protein extraction and starch extraction technology are the company's core technology and has applied for a technical invention patent. In two investor research announcements released in September, Shuangta Food stated that the demand for pea protein by plant meat and other related downstream customers will see a significant increase. The company's current annual production capacity of pea protein is about 70,000 tons, accounting for about 30% to 40% of the global annual production capacity of pea protein. The sales of pea protein in the plant meat field account for about 10%, and the application has just begun.

Focusing on the plant meat business, Shuangta Food has established two independent subsidiaries, and will develop an overall layout including marketing, channels, R&D, and cooperation in the future.

The United States DuPont, which provides technical support for plant meat to Jinzi Ham, Baicaowei and other companies, is constantly improving the processing technology in the field of brushed protein. In August, the company said in an interview with a reporter from the Daily Economic News: "Plant meat has huge potential in the Chinese market. DuPont has many partners in China. Now everyone is in the preparation stage, and it is urgently needed to promote the healthy development of the industry."

In response, Shuangta Food also stated in an announcement that at present, the European and American markets already have relevant standards for plant meat, such as no milk eggs, etc. The company has drafted and formulated national standards such as Longkou vermicelli, vermicelli, and related starch, and deeply understood the positive role of national standards in the development of the industry. Now the country is paying attention to the development of the plant meat industry from a strategic level. The company is obliged to participate in the formulation of standards, which will also provide a guiding role for the company to carry out related businesses in the future.

Jinzi Ham is also actively participating in the formulation of national plant meat industry standards. On September 12, Shi Yanjun, chairman of Jinzi Ham, told the reporter of "Daily Economic News": "We did a lot of work when the plant meat storm last year." Regarding the progress of the current industry standards formulation, Ma Xiaozhong, chief engineer of Jinzi Ham, said: "Just just approved the project and started working soon."

It can be seen that the increase in domestic and foreign brands and suppliers in the Chinese market has allowed upstream raw material supply, midstream solution solutions, and downstream brands to work together. China's plant meat revolution is no longer a "team battle" that relies on one or two companies to fight alone, but a "team battle" jointly initiated by the entire industry to reconstruct consumers' eating habits.

Different beef Picture source: Beyond Meat

Chief engineer of Jinzi Ham Ma Xiaozhong told the reporter of "Daily Economic News" that due to differences in consumption concepts, the plant meat market situation in China and the United States is quite different. American consumers focus on nutrition, environmental protection, and animal welfare, while Chinese consumers focus on taste and similarity to real meat. The US market has developed rapidly in the past two years, and the Chinese market still needs to be cultivated. Most of the companies entering the market have limited sales, and the same is true for Jinzi Ham. In the future, we should do more work in market cultivation, consumer education and research and development of plant-based meat products more suitable for Chinese consumers.

"The entry of US companies in China will play a role in promoting the Chinese plant meat market, but they must also adapt to the demand of the Chinese market. How performance remains to be seen." Ma Xiaozhong further stated that the company will closely monitor the changes in the entire industrial chain of the plant meat industry at home and abroad, maintain close contact with technical experts in all links, and speed up the research and development of plant meat products suitable for the needs of the Chinese market, and wait for the right time to launch it into the market.

Zhu Danpeng analyzed to reporters that China's huge demographic dividend has given plant meat projects a large space for market expansion. With the upgrading of consumption, the people are more willing to try plant meat, which is a product with low food safety risks and high-tech content. This is also a core reason why Beyond Meat values ​​the Chinese market. The establishment of factories has a great role in promoting the entire development process of plant meat.

But it should be clear that Ma Xiaozhong emphasized that plant meat has advantages such as zero cholesterol and nutritional components that can be combined on demand, and has a promising prospect. It can be used as a supplement to human animal protein and replace part of animal protein to solve the problem of insufficient sources of animal protein caused by the growth of the earth's population. However, plant proteins cannot completely replace animal proteins, because many animal protein nutrients do not have plant proteins, so they can only be complementary.

Affected by the announcement that it will build a factory in China, Beyond Meat's stock price has risen for three consecutive trading days. As of the close of US stocks on September 10, it has risen 13.7% in the past three days to US$143.04 per share.

The domestic A-share plant meat sector performed more actively. As soon as the news came out on September 8, many concept stocks rose sharply in the end of the trading session. At the opening of the market on September 9, Shuangta Food (002481, SZ) continued to rise by more than 5%. Since then, the sector has begun to fall as a whole. As of the closing on September 11, the plant meat sector seemed to have taken a "roller coaster". When will investors "eat meat in big stutters"?

Daily Economic News