China’s “free from meat” market, which includes plant-based products meant to replace meat, has grown 33.5% since 2014 to be worth $9.7 billion last year, according to Euromonitor. It predicts that the industry will be worth $11.9 billion by 2023.
Beyond Meat’s executive chairman Seth Goldman told Reuters it plans to customize its pea-based meat for the Chinese market to make dumplings and other products. The company is aiming to start production in Asia by the end next year before eventually expanding to China. “If you simply use pea protein, or soy protein, and then add a lot of additives to make them stick together and then sell to the market, there is no real innovation, the taste is really bad, from a consumer perspective, we don’t believe the demand will be able to meet that oversupply.”
China is currently grappling with surging prices for pork, its mainstay meat, after culling an estimated half its herd due to an epidemic of African swine fever. A bruising trade war with the United States has also raised prices of beef and other meat products.