Further expansion of the portfolio of plant-based ingredients

Now Beneo, one of the lead­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers of func­tion­al ingre­di­ents, has announced the acqui­si­tion of the Dutch com­pa­ny Meat­less B.V.. This means that in the future, cus­tomers will ben­e­fit from an even wider selec­tion of plant-based tex­tur­iz­ers for meat and fish alter­na­tives. At the same time, this step posi­tions the com­pa­ny even more strong­ly as a major play­er in the growth mar­ket for plant-based tex­tur­iz­ing ingre­di­ents. Mar­ket­ing of the new ingre­di­ents, which are made from rice, field beans, wheat, peas, lupins and quinoa, among oth­ers, will ini­tial­ly focus on Europe. Glob­al dis­tri­b­u­tion of the expand­ed port­fo­lio is planned.

“Just recent­ly, we announced the invest­ment in a new plant to process field beans. The acqui­si­tion of Meat­less B.V. is now the next log­i­cal step. Once again, it allows us to demon­strate how impor­tant it is for us to fur­ther expand our busi­ness with ingre­di­ents for plant-based alter­na­tive products.”

- Andreas Her­ber, Mem­ber of the Exec­u­tive Board

The acqui­si­tion comes against the back­drop of a strong increase in demand for plant-based prod­ucts. Accord­ing to mar­ket research firm Euromon­i­tor, the annu­al growth rate of the fish and meat alter­na­tives mar­ket is expect­ed to aver­age more than ten per­cent (CAGR) over the next five years.

Meat­less B.V., based in Goes, the Nether­lands, was found­ed in 2005. Spe­cial­iz­ing in tex­tured veg­etable ingre­di­ents, the com­pa­ny offers a port­fo­lio of prod­ucts derived from var­i­ous veg­etable raw mate­ri­als — includ­ing rice, field beans, wheat, peas, lupins and quinoa. This range com­ple­ments the ingre­di­ent port­fo­lio and enables promis­ing new com­bi­na­tions. In the future, cus­tomers will thus ben­e­fit from sig­nif­i­cant­ly greater choice and flex­i­bil­i­ty when devel­op­ing meat and fish alternatives.

The prod­ucts fea­ture a pro­duc­tion process with a very low car­bon foot­print. This sup­ports Beneo’s goal of using pro­duc­tion con­cepts that help to fur­ther reduce CO2 emissions.

Andreas Her­ber adds, “The two com­pa­nies com­ple­ment each oth­er per­fect­ly. Beneo has many years of expe­ri­ence with func­tion­al ingre­di­ents as well as good access to plant-based raw mate­ri­als. Meat­less con­vinces with its inno­v­a­tive tech­nol­o­gy and a unique prod­uct port­fo­lio. Togeth­er, we can offer our cus­tomers a ver­sa­tile range of appli­ca­tion solu­tions for plant-based meat and fish alter­na­tives that are adapt­ed to their needs. The acqui­si­tion also enables us to devel­op excit­ing new prod­ucts while sup­port­ing our goal for greater sustainability.”