Before Larry Page and Sergei Brin were creating Google in Susan Wojcicki’s garage (Wojcicki went on to become Google employee number 16 and the CEO of YouTube) in 1996, Jim Clark and Marc Andreessen set out to try and capitalise on the emerging idea of a World Wide Web.
What was, up until then, a nascent chaotic impenetrable place to anyone outside of academia, dramatically changed when their web browser software, Netscape Navigator, launched in 1994.
Google officially launched in 1998 and the rest, as they say, is history.
These companies are just two examples of an industry that was about to go boom. The fact that the first image uploaded to the web only happened in 1992, really does bring that speed of change into focus.
Yesterday (4 October), more than 400 people convened in Melbourne for AltProteins23 – the largest alternative protein industry event in the Southern Hemisphere – to hear from 40 of the sector’s brightest minds.
It’s the second AltProteins summit, established and run by think tank Food Frontier, with the number of delegates doubling on the inaugural 2022 event.
Alternative proteins – plant-based meat, precision fermentation, cultivated meat – are to food and beverage manufacturing what those early days of the internet were to tech. While some of the processes now being lauded as ground-breaking have been used for millennia, companies had been deep in alternative protein R&D for decades.
But technological advancements, a growing world population and the very real challenge of how to feed it, environmental degradation and climate change, and people becoming more knowledgeable about what they eat and how it’s made have been the kindling to the insatiable human drive to innovate and, indeed, capitalise, this time with what we eat.
In his keynote address, Food Frontier founder and chair Thomas King reflected on the impact of human food systems on land and sea.
Thomas explained that 62 per cent of all mammals on earth are livestock. Humans make up 34 per cent, and only four per cent are wild. Agriculture uses almost half the earth’s habitable surface, three quarters of which is in grazing, while 90 per cent of fish stocks are fully exploited.
“We now find ourselves at a crossroads. I believe the same ingenuity that got us here can rapidly take us to a far more sustainable ecosystem where we work with our finance systems, not against them. And innovation in our protein supply is a crucial piece of the puzzle,” King said.
This year’s AltProteins showed the pace of development and maturation of the sector. Far less Pentecostal about how it is changing the world and preaching to the choir, a lot less ‘us’ (alternative proteins) and ‘them’ (animal proteins), but still keenly focused on the urgency of creating new sources of nutrition to relieve the pressure on global food systems.
The Health, Nutrition, and Science session had a frank conversation about the fact we are still dealing with novel foods. There are many questions that don’t have answers and the industry seems comfortable and confident to say, “we’re still working that out”.
Perhaps this is one of the largest points of difference to other emerging industries. The stakes are high here, the room for cowboys and renegades to drop products in the market that are largely untested and unregulated is a lot harder than say, buying a social media platform, gutting it, changing its name, and not articulating what your goal is in doing so.
Speakers and attendees across the board recognised that for alternative proteins to be accepted by consumers and to have real impact, there can be no room for doubt about the sector and the products it produces to be safe.
The Regulation for Cellular Agriculture session – with speakers from FSANZ, the Future Ready Safety Hub, Vow, and Alternative Proteins Council – looked at the processes that need to take place, particularly for this pillar of the sector, when it comes to regulation and food security.
Managing urgency with thorough due process can be frustrating but few in the room could argue it was unnecessary.
There is also widespread agreement in the industry than no single company, investor, research group, or government is going to solve the big picture issues.
King called for a “huge” level of genuine collaboration and a collective impact mindset.
“Ecosystem wide coordination to one plus one equals three partnerships are what will wield greater results for all involved. The idea a satellite company could successfully develop end-to-end production, or every plant-based business run a profitable facility is unrealistic,” he said.
While King’s sentiment is wise, it is a major deviation from standard business practice, and one Food & Drink Business sees and hears a lot about in the sector. There are examples of companies doing it differently – the Food and Agribusiness Network and Turbine Project on the Sunshine Coast is one example, and Openway Foods' operational set-up another.
But there is still fierce competition at play. Companies are working together – as a supplier or contract manufacturer for example – but much of that is closely guarded by those involved and not without its challenges.
“Rapid innovation often comes by climbing on the shoulders of others. Mergers, acquisitions, and partnerships are a sign of a maturing market, and it is much easier to accelerate growth by using the proven capability of others, by investing in even more resilient, productive, and profitable food systems, and from helping unlock the potential of our scientists and attracting more talent into the space, de-risking the scale of critical infrastructure for new supply chains, attracting greater inbound investment, and increasing our international attractiveness and competitiveness,” King said.
The most important factor of all is the product themselves. Simply put, they have to taste good.
I chaired the Consumer Acceptance and Education panel with Daphne Tan from dsm-firmenich, Nathaniel Tupou from v2food, and Megan Stanton from Mintel, which highlighted the challenges in engaging consumers to try, and repeat buy, novel foods.
Considering the rapid consumer acceptance and adoption of alternative milks, the question was asked, why is that consumer behaviour not translating to plant-based meat. Stanton pointed out, buying a product to cook with at home that you haven’t cooked with before, where there is a risk the family won’t eat it is a much bigger commitment and ask than trying oat milk in your coffee.
Tupou talked about v2food’s – one of the early disrupters in the Australian market – latest advertising campaign and how the messaging has changed for its first in 2021.
The new ad uses the idea of a ‘taste-a-tarian’ (as opposed to flexitarian, which is also widely used) to refocus consumers on the idea of taste rather than the product being an alternative protein. It launched last month.
And Tan highlighted how there is no room for one size fits all with products. Based in Singapore, Tan sees a much more open and accepting audience to novel foods than experienced in Australia or New Zealand. What works in one country could completely miss the mark in another.
Just as products are still evolving, so too is consumer awareness and understanding of what these novel foods have to offer.
The other biggest challenge is scaling. Ultimately, companies have to start making money rather than just raising it.
King: “There have been multi-year lows across the board. New and emerging fields like this one have been hit hard and there’s a risk of losing valuable talent, ideas, and IP.
“But no journey of industry diversification or transition is ever truly rapid or frictionless. Emerging industries go through periods of expansion, contraction, and restructure, that’s inevitable and necessary.
“Will all companies succeed? No. Will we see more mergers and acquisitions? Yes. Is this a sign that the space has gone backwards? Not at all.
“At the outset, this was new, novel, unfamiliar. Now plant-based meat is proven. Not only is it a viable category with consumer appeal, but it is a young exciting industry with both commercial and community benefits, and confidence that agriculture can follow a similar path. But both will require business, government, and investors to be working in sync.”
In his closing remarks, Food Frontier CEO Simon Easson said consumers were yet to truly realise the impact meat consumption has on the world. But the pace of development in the sector is such it will reach a point where that is no longer the case.
Easson reflected on the first cultivated meat burger, created in 2013 in a Dutch laboratory, presented to the world with great fanfare, and also costing $300,000.
“I don’t think we can say anymore that we have only just started. We are well on the way, alternative proteins are here to stay and in fact, the growth of alternative proceeds has barely begun,” Easson said.
Oh, that first cultivated meat burger? It was funded by Google co-founder Sergei Brin.
