Inside Green Innovation: Progress Report - Third Edition highlights:
- Innovation levels for plant-based meat are currently at a record high, despite recent commercial difficulties.
- The recent surge is a global effort. While innovators based in Europe and the US are leading the way, the number of new filings coming from Japan and South Korea is also increasing.
- Large, established, non-specialist companies such as Fuji Oil, Cargill Inc, Nestlé, Roquette, Unilever and Royal DSM dominate the highest filers. This is in contrast to other alternative protein sectors where younger, specialised companies and universities dominate.
- The continued appeal of this sector is evident, with new applicants continuing to be attracted, however, at the same time the longer established applicants may be consolidating their ’early starter’ advantage.
- New innovation is focused on replicating the experience of eating meat by attempting to mimic the appearance, texture, juiciness, and mouth feel of meat. The questions remain, however, as to whether enough is being done to address fundamental nutritional and overprocessing concerns in the sector.
Plant-based meat is produced from protein, fat, vitamins, and minerals sourced from plants and offers a synthetic alternative to traditional meat products. The goal is to produce plant-based meat that mimics the appearance, texture, and taste of meat.
Many plant-based meat-analogue products are well-established in the marketplace, with meat alternatives such as tofu and tempeh dating back thousands of years. Recently, many consumers are choosing to eat less meat for health, environmental and social reasons. The wave of public interest in alternative meat products and initiatives like Veganuary has also led to the formation of many companies competing for the same market. There is also increased pressure from advisory bodies to reduce the consumption of meat from livestock by 30 percent, due to sustainability and environmental concerns.
Yet, for many, the desire to consume meat is deeply engrained into the psyche. The gap between the objective of reducing livestock meat consumption while still satisfying people’s need to eat something akin to meat may, at least partially, be filled by plant-based meat-analogues. The plant-based meat industry has certainly responded to this rise in demand, with an explosion in innovation and sales of plant-based meat products over the last ten years.
Beyond Meat, for a long time the leading plant-based meat pioneer, launched its plant-based chicken strips in 2012 and they have historically been at the forefront of innovation in this technology area. In 2016 the plant-based Beyond Burger (by Beyond Meat) and Impossible Burger (by Impossible Foods Inc.) were launched and found initial success globally. Fast-food chains – seeing the rise in interest and sales – joined the plant-based meat market with McDonalds creating its McPlant burger with Beyond Meat.
However, during the past year or so, the industry has experienced something of a slump. The marker leader, Beyond Meat, has seen its share price decrease from a high in 2019. Some plant-based meat manufacturers have filed for administration, including Plant & Bean and Meatless Farm in the UK. As consumer interest has faltered, UK supermarkets have started to reduce their plant-based meat ranges.
Various reasons have been proposed for this downturn, including consumer concerns about the nutritional benefits of plant-based meat products, worries about their ultra-processed nature, the cost-of-living crisis and also possible over-crowding and confusion in the market. There is some concern that due to the current low barrier to entry in this sector, the market is suffering from oversaturation by many new brand-led companies. Such companies are felt to offer little in the way of real technological development, offering copycat products that fail to address the fundamental issues with plant-based meat. The nutritional and over-processing issues are more likely to influence the typical consumer base for these products, versus the average consumer.
As consumer interest has fallen, some of companies formed to feed the original demand for plant-based meat have experienced inevitable difficulties. Consequently, this may be an opportunity for the surviving companies to consolidate their product offerings, market share and provide a more sustainable foundation for future growth. Part of the problem companies need to solve is regaining consumer confidence, not least in the nutritional profile of the products on offer. This means striking a balance between producing nutritionally rich products that are also economically viable for the mass market.
New innovation is needed to help to re-invigorate this field. There is likely to be a rich market available for companies that can combine fundamental technological progress with effective branding. Therefore, it would be reasonable to expect to see continued research and development into better tasting, nutritionally-balanced products available at a more reasonable price.
New companies such as PlantPunk are seeking to address the nutritional concerns around previous plant-based products, as well as provide solutions to other on-going issues affecting the industry, such as potential allergens (e.g., from pea protein) and concerns relating to low levels of protein absorption from plant-based meat. Other companies in this area continue to innovate at pace, seeking improved taste, texture, and appearance.
This activity is shown by the growing number of new global patent filings happening over the past four years, which reached a new historic high in 2021, despite the recent downturns in the market (Figure 1). This demonstrates the importance companies are placing on innovation to attract and win back consumers.
Figure 1: Twenty-year trend - global priority filings - plant-based meat innovations
(Priority filing = the first time a patent application for a unique invention has been filed (the first filing))
Europe has retained its position from 2020 as the territory with the most innovation. Filing numbers from the US are not far behind and the number of patent filings for this technology in Japan and South Korea also continues to increase.
Figure 2: Twenty-year trend - global priority filings by territory – plant-based meat innovations
The number of unique patent applicants has again increased in 2021 so it appears that new entrants are still being attracted to this market, despite the perceived slump. Nevertheless, continuing the trend from 2020, the ratio of unique applicants to the total number of priority filings dropped which indicates that the larger (or possibly more established companies) in this field are cementing their IP position.
Figure 3: Twenty-year trend - unique assignees and priority filings by year - plant-based meat innovations
(Patent assignee = the owner of a patent/application, also known as the ‘applicant’ (for a patent application), patentee (for a granted patent), or proprietor.)
Types of application
Innovation in this area tends to focus on how to produce a plant-based product which mimics the taste, texture, colour and cooking behaviour of meat.
An issue with plant-based meat products is their so called “off-tastes” (i.e. residual vegetable tastes) and some of the patent applications filed in 2021 seek to address these. Another challenge innovation is tackling in this field is how to produce a plant-based product with a similar fibrous texture to meat, which has similar disintegration qualities when eaten (i.e., it breaks up in a similar way to meat when chewed). There has also been innovation in creating gel matrices to mimic meat fat in plant-based meat products and to make them cook similar to meat.
Other patent applications concern how to make plant-based products look like meat by giving them a similar colour. Different vegetable protein sources are being explored such as soybean protein, pea protein, fava bean protein, legume and rapeseed protein. Patent filings in 2021 also show innovation in producing traditional meat-based foods such as meat pies, sausages and bacon.
Notable companies
As in previous years, large and established, non-specialist companies continue to dominate the list of highest filers: Fuji Oil, Cargill Inc, Nestlé, Roquette, Unilever and Royal DSM remain amongst the highest global patent filers in this field. This contrasts with the high filer lists for cultivated meat and insect protein, which are dominated by relatively young, specialist companies, and also include a number of universities. This, no doubt, reflects the relatively later stage of the plant-based meat industry compared to the others, both technologically as well as market maturity. These companies may well believe that the current slump is more associated with product quality than consumer demand.
Ibiden – a Japanese company with an established dried food business – is another company that has emerged as a high filer in 2021. It is expanding its business into plant proteins due to potential shortages of animal protein and fishery resources. Their applications relate to meat-like food products comprising soy protein and modified to produce a texture which resembles fibrous meat, has random irregularities to make it appear natural, and provides appropriate disintegration upon chewing.
Corn Product Development, based in California, has also increased its patent filings in this area in 2021, isolating various plant proteins such as fava beans and legumes for use in plant-based meat and dairy alternative.
Figure 4: Twenty-year trend - top filers – plant-based meat innovations
Nestlé filed the most patent applications in this field in 2021 (Figure 4). The company’s innovations cover a wide range of technical areas, with some focussed on creating plant-based meats with a similar fibrous appearance, juiciness, and tenderness to meat. It also filed applications for plant protein-based products with a crispy coating, dehydrated meat analogue products, and a vegan egg analogue comprising legume protein. Other patent filings cover plant-based meats with a colorant to resemble meat, a fat analogue to include in a plant-based meat and sugar beet pectin microgel particles which can be used as rheology modifiers. Nestlé has also filed an application relating to equipment for making meat analogue products.
Cargill filed 10 patent applications related to plant-based meat in 2021. Several of these applications concern pigment formulations to mimic the colour of raw meat, and its transition to brown when cooked. Other applications cover ways to reduce residual vegetable flavours and plant-based products which can be frozen and reheated by a consumer.
Fuji Oil also remains a major filer in plant-based foodstuffs. Their applications concern plant-based protein products with a meat-like texture and umami (savoury meat) taste. The company has also filed an application for a transesterified oil and fat which can be used to make a plant-based meat product juicy and an application for dried meat-like food products imitating beef jerky, split squid, fried squid, etc.
Royal DSM made an application in 2021 for a computer-based method for designing a premix of vitamins and minerals for an alternative meat or fish product. This technology may be aimed at addressing the consumer concerns about the nutritional profiles of plant-based meat products discussed above.
Impossible Foods, another pioneering company in this field, filed two patent applications in 2021, one related to simulating whole cuts of meat with non-animal food products using aligned fibres, a binding agent, and optionally, a scaffold and gelling agent.
Implications for innovation and future patent filings
The plant-based meat market has suffered recently but patent application numbers continue to rise and new filers emerge. There appears to be much ongoing innovation aimed at mimicking the appearance, texture, juiciness, and mouth-feel of meat. More research and development may now be focused on creating better nutritional profiles and aiming to reduce processing steps to allay consumer fears of what is perceived to be ultra-processed foods. To increase sales, innovation is also necessary to reduce the costs of the final product, while more efficient and scalable methods and apparatus are needed to create more viable, mass-market products.
Commenting on our report, Dave Ahern, Founder of PlantPunk, a UK start-up, anticipates that the sector is on the cusp of a second wave of plant-based meat alternatives hitting the market, based on significantly different technology to what came before.
It will be interesting to see whether the current capital-invested companies are able to pivot to the potentially significantly different processes and apparatus that may well be needed to produce the next generation of nutritionally rich and more so-called whole plant-based meat, or whether it will be a new wave of innovative and agile start-ups leading this next stage for the sector.
That remains to be seen in the coming years. What we can say now is that despite the drop in sales, more resources continue to be invested in developing plant-based meat products, as many industry insiders feel that innovation is the key to recovery. Due to the crowded marketplace, companies need to keep innovating and developing so that they can survive and prosper. There appears to be a clear global need for alternative protein sources so innovating through the current downturn may be the go-to strategy for viable companies in this sector. There is a strong warning note, however, that superficial brand and technological innovation is unlikely to be enough.
