An employee inspects a packet of frozen meat free ‘chicken pieces’ of Quorn, manufactured by Quorn Foods. Picture: BLOOMBERG/SIMON DAWSON
“Our ambition is to become the king of alternative chicken globally,” Quorn CEO Marco Bertacca said before Monde’s IPO, the largest for a Southeast Asian food company. Monde debuted in the Philippines on Tuesday and closed at 13.48 pesos, down from its 13.50 peso IPO price. There is some ground to catch up on. Since its $780m acquisition by Monde in 2015, Quorn has suffered construction delays and chiller failures at its facilities, which depleted inventory and forced it to cut back on orders. The compound annual growth rate of Monde’s alternative-meat sales ticked along at only 5% from 2017-2020 despite the boom in the market.
The snack maker plans to increase its Lucky Me! noodle sales by making them healthier and offering more flavours, while also cutting palm-oil content by as much as 70%, Soesanto said. Instant noodles accounted for half of Monde’s 68-billion pesos in sales in 2020. The average Filipino consumes 36 packs of noodles a year, well below places like Indonesia, Vietnam and South Korea, where the number is over 60, he said.
AIA Investment Management, Eastspring Investments and Singapore state investment fund GIC are among cornerstone investors, according to Monde’s IPO prospectus. Soesanto said last week there had been “overwhelming interest” from international and domestic investors.