This is just the beginning. Burcon has a great future ! Noodle Maker Bets Americans Will Dig Quorn’s Alternative Chicken
The Philippines-based company, which also sells staple foods and is the owner of Lucky Me! instant noodles, will use Quorn’s substitute chicken product to take on heavyweights like Beyond Meat Inc. and Impossible Foods Inc. in a sector dominated by faux beef, executives said in an interview.
“Our ambition is to become the king of alternative chicken globally,” Quorn Chief Executive Officer Marco Bertacca told Bloomberg before Monde’s IPO, the largest ever for a Southeast Asian food company. Monde debuted in the Philippines on Tuesday and closed at 13.48 pesos, down from its 13.50 peso IPO price.
Monde plans to increase Quorn’s production capacity and ship to more fast-food chains in the U.S., spending nearly 16 billion pesos ($335 million) to expand its presence in the country. It is also building two fermenters and packaging facilities in the U.K., where Quorn is based and has a 28% market share. Barclays Plc estimates the global alternative-meat market will grow tenfold to more than $140 billion by 2029, or 10% of the meat industry as a whole.
“The alternative meat category is going to explode, and we want to get our capacity ready as soon as possible,” Monde Chief Executive Officer Henry Soesanto said. “We need big money for that.”
There’s some ground to catch up on. Since its 550 million pound ($780 million) acquisition by Monde in 2015, Quorn has suffered construction delays and chiller failures at its facilities, which depleted inventory and forced it to cut back on orders. The compound annual growth rate of Monde’s alternative-meat sales ticked along at only 5% from 2017-2020 despite the boom in the market. Beyond Meat’s sales had a CAGR of more than 130% in that period.