Spain’s alternative protein ecosystem is thriving, with investments rising by nearly 550% in 2024. Now, experts are calling for public funding and a national plant-based action plan.
Plant-based, microbial, and cell-cultured protein startups are the main focus of Spain’s agtech sector, with 42% of startups working on these innovations.
Research by the Good Food Institute (GFI) Europe shows that Spain is the second most attractive country for alternative protein investors in Europe (behind Denmark), as the sector’s fundraising efforts became wildly successful last year.
Funding for alternative proteins reached €64.7M in 2024, a 547% jump from the year before (albeit from a small base), led by Heura’s €40M Series B round. This came as sales of plant-based food hit €491M in supermarkets, representing a 10% increase in volume.
Additionally, one in five Spanish households bought a plant-based meat product at least once last year. The data shows that the country has all the ingredients to become a regional future food leader, though it will need strong financial and policy support from the government to get there.
Spain’s R&D prowess is hampered by a lack of government support
GFI Europe’s report reveals that 71% of Spain’s alternative protein startups are focused on plant-based ingredients, while 19% are working on fermentation and 10% on cultivated meat.
This industry is built on a strong and rapidly growing R&D ecosystem – between 2020 and 2024, Spain had the fifth-highest number of researchers in this field in Europe, and the sixth-largest number of publications.
It sits 14th on the list of researchers and publications per capita, and 11th on productivity, churning out 0.51 papers per researcher. Moreover, Spain ranks fourth in publications when adjusted for purchasing power parity.
Catalonia is highlighted as a global innovation hub, led by IRTA’s Centre d’Innovació en Proteïnes Alternatives (CiPA), Spain’s first public research centre dedicated to alternative proteins. This hub is coordinating research projects with universities, startups, and businesses. Other clusters are also being developed at Navarre, the Basque Country, the Madrid and Valencia regions, Galicia, and Andalusia.
According to GFI Europe, climate change causes annual losses of €550M to Spain’s agriculture sector, underscoring the need for alternative sources that use fewer resources and generate less pollution.
There have been some positive signs: the National Food Strategy, published earlier this year, acknowledged the role alternative proteins can play in the food system. But the government needs to go further to truly reap this industry’s economic benefits.
“Spain has the opportunity to become the benchmark for alternative proteins in Southern Europe,” said Carlos Campillos Martínez, public affairs manager for GFI Europe in Spain. “Our country has the scientific talent and business ecosystem to merge culinary tradition with agri-food innovation – but it needs the right support to consolidate itself as an economic, sustainable, and industrial innovation driver.”
How policymakers can bolster Spain’s future food sector
The report reveals that alternative protein firms face significant barriers to realising their full potential, including limited access to production-scale infrastructure and a lack of R&D funding from the government.
GFI Europe has made nine recommendations for policymakers with varying complexity levels. Two of the easiest ones involve ensuring funding instruments for R&D and the commercialisation of alternative proteins. Just as with AI, the government should allocate specific research financing for these foods, like other European countries have. Further, strict requirements for existing funding instruments have become a barrier for the sector.
The other low-complexity recommendations are to provide pre-submission guidance to streamline the regulatory approval process for novel foods, and include alternative proteins in the Mediterranean diet guidelines. Plant-based alternatives can help replace processed meat intake to allow consumers to more closely adhere to the guidelines.
In terms of solutions with medium complexity, Spain should ensure that the agrifood tech sandbox focuses more specifically on regulatory challenges, like those stemming from the EU’s novel food regulations.
At the same time, some industrial facilities are currently underutilised or abandoned, so Spain should explore their potential for retrofitting to reduce costs for the sector and revitalise local communities. The government is also advised to mobilise private funding to support infrastructure development.
And as for the most complex actions, Spain should facilitate food diversification by encouraging investments from traditional Spanish industries like wineries, breweries or olive oil producers (in addition to meat and dairy companies).
Finally, GFI Europe is asking the Spanish government to develop a national action plan to boost the production and consumption of plant-based food, the way Denmark has done and is encouraging other EU members to do. Failure to do so would raise the risk of Spain being left behind in Europe’s future food race.
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