Upfield, the largest plant-based consumer packaged goods company globally, comprises over 100 brands including popular ones like Flora, I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter, Rama, Emlea, and Violife. The company aims to inspire greater plant-based uptake and expand its reach to one billion consumers by 2030, up from 305 million currently.
To achieve this target, Upfield plans to eliminate dairy ingredients from its portfolio, currently at 99% dairy-free, and use 100% natural ingredients (currently at 97%), apart from aspiring to shift away from plastic packaging. Taste is the company’s critical focus to entice consumers, according to John Verbakel, the Chief Research & Development Officer at Upfield, who spoke at an event held by Rabobank, Wageningen University & Research, Anterra Capital, and StartLife in the Netherlands.
Despite Upfield’s high confidence in providing taste and texture parity between plant-based butter alternatives and their conventional counterpart, it remains challenging for other dairy-free products, like cheese, to match their dairy counterparts. Plant-based cheese is one such product with less milk protein, making it difficult to mimic its functionality with current plant protein alternatives.
Upfield is investing heavily in plant protein research to close this gap, and address common issues like off-notes, color problems, and lack of meltability in plant-based alternatives. Additionally, all their teams, including the R&D department at Upfield, and external partners, will go the extra mile to support innovation and make plant-based cream and cheese alternatives more accessible to the mass consumer base.
By building a knowledge base in plant proteins and leveraging technology, Upfield hopes to achieve parity in taste and texture for its plant-based creams and cheese products. Their information-sharing and partnership approach aims to benefit both new start-ups and Upfield alike.
If you want to learn more about unconventional plant-based meat and dairy innovations, tune in to the free-to-attend broadcast event “Protein Vision.” It will stream across four sessions on June 21-22, 2023, and bring insights on the latest technology and advancements powering the next generation of meat and dairy-free innovation.
