Recent progress you’ve made possible

ProVeg’s pioneering Food Innovation Challenge – now in its third year – awarded prizes to the best and most creative plant-based innovations in the Asia-Pacific Region. Six winning teams were chosen from 179 proposals, submitted by 558 students from 163 universities and 16 countries. The winners received a grand total of $11,800 in cash awards, as well as gaining valuable insight into an exciting and fast-growing industry and connecting with some of the biggest names from the food industry, including PepsiCo, Unilever, Omnifoods, Beyond Meat, Oatly, and CPF (a multinational food-and-beverage company headquartered in Thailand, serving over 3 billion people in around 30 countries).

Students from Shanghai Ocean University and Hainan University in China bagged first prize for their proposal ‘Plant-based Pork Floss’, a plant-based alternative for infants over seven months old, made from plant-based meat fortified with vitamin D and vitamin A. 

Shirley Lu, ProVeg Asia’s Managing Director, spoke at the Dairy Forum of Salon International de L’alimentation (SIAL) in China about the market potential for plant-based, fermentation, and cultured solutions. SIAL is the largest food expo in Asia, attracting more than 6,200 food professionals throughout the region. 

ProVeg Incubator alumni are getting more and more investors on board with their latest plant-based innovations. Kern Tec has secured funding of $2.66 million from the renowned European Innovation Council Accelerator, a programme that supports individual and medium enterprises that are looking to develop and scale up game-changing technologies.

Omni, a graduate of the Incubator’s sixth cohort that produces plant-based dog food, launched a crowdfunding campaign and smashed their $450,000 target in 15 minutes.

Remilk, another Incubator alumnus, recently reached two new regulatory milestones: they have received regulatory approval from both the US Food and Drug Administration and Singapore’s Food Agency. A no-questions letter from the FDA letter means that the Israel-based precision-fermentation company’s proteins can be safely used in food products under the FDA’s GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) standards.

ProVeg successfully launched the third edition of the New Food Invest, bringing together more than 200 participants from all over the world, ready and eager to explore opportunities in the plant-based scene.

The conference brought together some of the biggest plant-based companies in Asia, including Umami, a Singapore-based, cultivated-seafood startup, and Cultimate Foods, which produces a cultivated-fat ingredient for plant-based meat. It also attracted investors in the plant-based sector in Asia, including Impact Investment Fund, Seneca Impact Advisors, Dao Foods, and Ahimsa Investments.

Focusing on the Asia Pacific markets, the conference covered the current state of affairs with alternative protein, sustainable finance and corporate investment in Asia, as well as panels focusing on China and India and those ingredients of most relevance to the Asian market.