One Quarter of New Food Products are vegan.
John Collier Ph.D MSc Marketing PMP
Innovation Consultant | Facilitator | Design Thinking | Sprint Facilitator | Hackathons | Food, Agri, Med Devices, Health, Energy | Grant applications | Strategy | Mentor with LEOs, EI, únaG, The IDA |
Dr John Collier, John Collier Consulting.
In 2019 over 25% of new product introductions were plant based. This is evidence of the growing market in Ireland and the UK. A recent Mintel report showed that this growth is mainly with flexitarians with 1/3 of the population buying meat alternatives as part of their weekly shopping trolley.
Flexitarians are those that chose to reduce the amount of meat they are eating for a large number of their weekly meal intake but will still eat meat on a number of occasions in the week. This increase in demand for vegan or plant-based meat alternatives has resulted in an enormous increase in sales of over 40% and is now worth €816M.
The strictly vegan market is still at about 1% of the population in Ireland and the UK but are strong social media users and are vocal about the diet they follow. This makes the number appear larger than it actually is. So the growth in the plant-based market is being driven by flexatarians.
Why though are people moving to a flexatarian diet? We conducted a survey with people online and out of 160 respondents 40% believed that a plant-based diet was healthier than a traditional omnivorous diet. 22% eat more plant-based meals because of their ethical beliefs around animal cruelty and the impact of animals on the environment. Finally for 38% of the population, the increase in the cost of meats and animal based proteins is too high and they have turned to more flexatarian options in an effort to reduce their food bills.
So it looks like plant based foods are here to stay for the foreseeable future and even for our meat producers and dairy producers it is important to start looking at this market and diversifying into plant based as well as their traditional industries.
Dr John Collier works with companies to develop plant-based product ranges that meet the needs of the current consumer as well as reformulating current and new products to make them vegan, high protein, refined sugar free or to address particular nutritional needs.