With the arrival of Impossible Foods in Australia, Kim Berry caught up with senior vice president International Nick Halla about launching in Australia and where the plant-based market is headed. This article first appeared in the January/February edition of Food & Drink Business.
As Impossible Foods was launching in Australia and New Zealand through the Grill’d burger chain and Sydney’s Butter outlets last November, it was also securing $500 million in its latest funding round.
Building on the $200 million it raised in August 2020 and $500 million in March 2020, the vegan meat company has raised close to $2 billion since is launch in 2011. It is now valued at around $7 billion.
Its arrival in Australia and New Zealand increases its market to seven countries with no sign of slowing.
In October 2020, CEO and founder Pat Brown said the company was going to double its R&D department and hire more than 100 scientists within the next 12 months. The company backed it up in 2021, with the launch of its sausage to the retail market, chicken nuggets, pork (into food service), and meatballs.
Food & Drink Business editor Kim Berry caught up with SVP International Nick Halla.
Q What made the Australian market an attractive proposition?
Our long-term mission is to be available in all markets, globally. That means scaling to produce nearly 500 billion kilograms of meat, and our goal is to do that by 2035. We obviously need to be in every market with that ambition.
Australia is one of the highest meat-consuming countries in the world by per capita meat consumption, alongside the US and Argentina. The country is known for its meat-centric culinary scene and cultural pastimes centred around meaty dishes – like barbecues and roasts. This means the market presents an enormous opportunity for us to reach a high concentration of our target consumer: the meat eater.
Additionally, our unique approach to transforming the global food system by offering compelling plant-based products has the potential to be a powerful part of Australia’s ambitious goal to achieve net zero emissions by 2050.
The production of animals for use in food is responsible for up to 17 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions globally and our expansion into Australia is critical for helping transform the local agricultural system to more sustainable plant-based production.
Q Impossible Foods has been at the forefront of plant-based protein alternatives for a decade – what have been the biggest changes you’ve witnessed?
We’ve certainly seen a variety of plant-based products starting to take the approach pioneered by Impossible Foods, which is to make plant-based products that aim to deliver the same taste as meat from animals. The plant-based products of the past offered alternatives that may have been tasty in their own right but weren’t attempting to compete against the incumbent industry directly.
Impossible Foods took a unique approach to developing a meat made from plant-based ingredients that is just as delicious, nutritious, affordable and craveable as conventional animal meat. We use modern science and technology to transform plant protein directly into delicious and nutritious meat that consumers love because this is the only way we will achieve our mission: to transform the global food system so that it can scale to feed the growing global population. It’s well understood that the current animal-based food system cannot scale to meet the growing global demand for meat from animals. To fulfill global demand for nutritious meat, we need to find a sustainable alternative.
This awareness has obviously spread, and we’re seeing more and more companies enter the space. This has generated a lot of investment around ingredients innovation, supply chains, and scaling manufacturing, which is all really encouraging and a good thing for the industry as a whole.
Q What do you see is driving consumer behaviour when adopting plant-based options – so moving from curiosity to habitual regular purchasing?
It all comes down to taste. Consumers may try something once for novelty, but if the product doesn’t taste good, they aren’t going to buy it again. Impossible Beef has an extremely high rate of repeat purchase because it’s meaningfully competing against conventional meat not just on taste, but all of the other factors that matter to consumers: nutrition, affordability, and availability while being much more sustainable.
Q What’s the strategy behind rolling out in quick service restaurants before retail?
We typically launch in food service outlets because the menu item has been developed by an experienced chef or culinary team so it guarantees that the first taste for the consumer is likely to be a really positive one. There’s also an ‘endorsement’ of sorts inherent in launching on a menu or with a brand that the consumer is familiar with, and that is known for their meaty dishes.
At this phase of our company growth, we think QSR is an important channel because it makes our products available to a wide variety of consumers, both geographically and in affordability.
Q What is next for Impossible Foods?
We have a number of products already on the market in other geographies, including Impossible Sausage, Impossible Chicken Nuggets, Impossible Pork and Impossible Meatballs. We plan to bring all of these products to each of our markets globally, so there’s plenty more to come there.
The long-term mission of Impossible Foods is to make delicious plant-based versions of all meat, fish and dairy products currently consumed, and launch these in every market and channel in the world. We have a number of products in development, and we’ll launch those when we feel they’re ready to compete in the marketplace.
We’re also continually looking at improving our existing products across taste, nutrition, affordability and sustainability. This includes looking at new ingredients, new manufacturing processes and more. Stay tuned!
