“Artificial meat”, which focuses on high protein, low fat, low cholesterol, energy conservation and environmental protection, has stood in the tuyere in recent years and set off waves of upsurge outside China. KFC, Starbucks and other industry giants have joined the artificial meat industry, and A-shares have been distributed by listed companies. The New Hope Liuhe Co.Ltd(000876) group recently announced the official commencement of its plant meat project, which once again attracted the attention of the industry.
Giants have joined the board. What is the current development and market popularization of China’s artificial meat industry? What are the challenges and opportunities facing the industry? What is the future development prospect? In this regard, the reporter of securities daily visited the offline retail places of plant meat and interviewed analysts.
plant meat products gradually infiltrate the offline retail scene
By the end of 2020, Zhiai plant meat was transferred to ITO Yokado, a popular shopping mall in Chengdu. During a recent visit to ITO Yokado’s Chengdu Shuangnan store, Securities Daily saw that the “vegetable meat tomato meat sauce flavor pasta”, “vegetable meat Golden Chicken Nugget” and “vegetable meat pie” under Zhiai were listed in the cold storage area of the mall, with a price of about ten yuan. The words “new commodity” were marked on the display of some products to attract attention, The words “vegetable protein meat” are prominently displayed in the product package. In addition, the store also sells “hand torn vegetarian meat (soybean protein products)” products produced by Huiji food. Generally speaking, the proportion of plant meat products in the products sold in shopping malls is still small. During the reporter’s visit, not many consumers came to buy Plant meat products. In the face of the problems of plant meat and artificial meat products in shopping malls raised by the reporter, the staff were also confused.
Starbucks started selling new plant meat products in China in 2020. After more than a year, how about product promotion? From the reporter’s visit to Chengdu, plant meat products are not popular. A clerk at a Starbucks store near the West Second Ring Road in Chengdu told the Securities Daily that there are no vegetable meat products on sale. “It was sold in the store before, but the promotion of plant meat products is limited. After the promotion period, we won’t sell it anymore.”
The reporter saw at another Starbucks store selling plant meat products that the store only sold a “different beef tomato cheese roll” plant meat product, which sold for about 30 yuan, The clerk said: “in the past, there were large rolls of the same type, with a share of more than 50 yuan. Because they didn’t sell well, now only this small portion of plant meat products are on sale. Our store doesn’t sell plant meat products every day. If they are on sale, we only stock one or two copies a day.”
In addition, plant meat products have also entered convenience chain stores. Many 711 convenience stores in Chengdu sell “plant meat and rice” fast food products, including “Sichuan style pepper and hemp”, “Italian Tomato”, “classic desktop” and other flavors, with the price of about 25 yuan.
Compared with the offline sales scene that is not popular, the promotion and sales categories of plant meat online are significantly larger and wider. The reporter saw on Taobao platform that the top three sales of goods searched by “plant meat” are plant meat spring rolls, vegetarian ham sausage and artificial meat snack vegetarian sausage, with prices ranging from about 20 yuan to more than 100 yuan. The monthly sales of the above products exceed 3000 copies.
competition in the Chinese market may heat up
“In terms of the development of vegetable meat in the Chinese market, compared with some European and American countries and even Brazil, we are still relatively backward. One of the biggest differences is that in China, vegetable meat is mainly sold through cooperation with catering channels, followed by online sales, and few brands can enter offline retail channels. Generally speaking, China’s artificial meat industry is more commercialized than other countries The West lags behind. ” Gao Haiping, director of Gaogang consulting and research, said in an interview with the Securities Daily.
Zhu danpeng, senior researcher of China Brand Research Institute, pointed out that since 2020, there have been more and more “players” in China’s vegetable meat market, international giants such as beyondmeat, Nestle, Unilever and Cargill have rushed to the beach, new brands represented by Sunday zero have emerged in China, and traditional vegetarian enterprises represented by Ningbo Sulian and Sichuan Huiji have also entered the vegetable meat market, Layout in various ways.
The reporter of Securities Daily noted that at present, Shandong Head Co.Ltd(002810) , Yantai Shuangta Food Co.Ltd(002481) , Orient Group Incorporation(600811) and other A-share companies have arranged the plant meat industry one after another. At the end of November, New Hope Liuhe Co.Ltd(000876) group announced that its “plant expectation” plant meat project was officially started, its factory supply chain has been fully opened, and four products have been launched, The next step will be “go all out to develop new products, trial production and production in succession”. The heat of China’s vegetable meat market is further warming up.
According to the research report issued by Chuancai securities, China’s vegetable meat market is still in its infancy. In 2019, the market scale will be 7 billion yuan, with a year-on-year increase of 22.6%. It is expected that by 2023, the scale of China’s artificial meat market will reach 13 billion US dollars. Benefiting from the demographic dividend brought by China’s huge population base, China’s artificial meat market has great development potential.
Although the development prospect of the industry is considerable, the artificial meat industry is also facing challenges. Tianfeng Securities Co.Ltd(601162) believes that taste and authenticity are the biggest barriers in the meat substitute industry and the primary factors to be solved by Chinese enterprises. The raw materials of Chinese artificial meat enterprises have significant advantages in price and scale. With the rapid development of the industry, technology and continuous innovation ability will be the key to the enterprise. With the improvement of China’s plant protein meat technology, channel expansion and penetration, it is necessary to develop diversified plant protein meat food based on China’s food culture different from foreign countries, so as to make the future development of the industry more diverse.
Gao Haiping believes that great changes are taking place on the supply side of China’s artificial meat market. “It is a good phenomenon that some established large and mature food enterprises are entering the artificial meat market, which will play a positive and leading role in the healthy development of artificial meat in China. These enterprises are rich in resources, and many have layout outside China, which will play a decisive role in shortening the gap with foreign artificial meat enterprises in terms of technical level and commercialization level The role of. Now is a good time for Chinese enterprises to “practice their internal skills” and vigorously develop. After the end of the epidemic, many foreign artificial meat enterprises are bound to look at China and the market competition will heat up. ”
Zhu danpeng told the Securities Daily, “the favorable policy, the pursuit of the capital, the layout of the industry and the hot promotion of the channel are all making concerted efforts to promote the golden track of plant meat. Who can first crack the needs of Chinese consumers and get the ‘Chinese stomach’, who can get the market opportunity.”
(Securities Daily)
