Vegan Food Group has closed its York office to focus on its plant-based factory in Germany, with VFC and Meatless Farm separating from the company, and Clive’s Purely Plants shutting down.
Two years after its formation, the Vegan Food Group (VFG) is disbanding.
The holding company was set up in hopes of becoming “a vegan Unilever”, evolving from its previous identity as VFC Foods and acquiring plant-based brands like Meatless Farm, Clive’s Purely Plants, and Tofutown.
But the trials and tribulations of the plant-based sector have led to a rethink of its strategy and structure. Last month, VFG shuttered its Clive’s Purely Plants business after closing its bakery in Dartmouth, leading to 32 redundancies.
Now, vegan chicken brand VFC and meat alternative maker Meatless Farm are separating from VFG to form VFC Foods again, after their former parent company closed its York office to focus on its plant-based factory in Lüneburg, Germany.
The move, first reported by The Grocer, is set to be completed over the next few weeks and will see VFC co-founder Adam Lyons return to the business in a “hands-on leadership position” after his 2024 exit.
“My return is centred on stabilisation across operations, finance, and commercial delivery,” he said. “The business is now governed, funded, and managed independently, with clear accountability and direct leadership.”
When approached by Green Queen, VFC Foods and VFG co-founder Matthew Glover said he couldn’t comment on specific questions about the business’s restructuring and future plans at this time.
But he stated: “Decisions were made in the interest of creating a permanent, profitable operation to produce and distribute sustainable plant protein across Europe. We’re excited about the future of Meatless Farm and the work of the team in Germany to manufacture and distribute high-quality plant protein products across Europe in the decades ahead.”
Vegan Food Group turns attention to German manufacturing site
After its acquisitions, VFG was home to more than 300 employees and 80-plus SKUs in over 21,000 distribution points across the UK and the EU.
“Our strategy is to establish VFG as a leader within the plant-based food sector, where customers, suppliers and industry leaders look to us for what’s coming next,” Matthew Glover, co-founder of VFC Foods and VFG, told Green Queen in 2024.
The business expected sales to hit £25M in 2024, a year it was also aiming to become profitable, with an eventual goal of collecting €100M in revenue. The company hasn’t published its financial results since the evolution into VFG, with its latest accounts overdue on the UK’s Companies House register. And in September, CEO Dave Sparrow stepped down from his role.
That said, VFG was already making moves to shore up its manufacturing recently. It invested £650,000 to install new equipment at Clive’s Purely Plants’ 15,000 sq ft site on Nelson Road Industrial Estate in July, months after it sold Tofutown’s Wiesbaum factory to The New Originals Company.
The latter move allowed VFG to expand production at its Lüneburg site, which is the largest dedicated plant-based facility in Europe. The business is now doubling down on this unit in Germany, having closed both Clive’s Purely Plants factory and its office in York.
It is here that VFG made an £11.5M investment to build a fully automated line to produce the plant-based equivalent of 500 million eggs a year, after becoming the exclusive European distributor for US startup Eat Just’s mung-bean-based Just Egg. That deal has seen the vegan liquid egg launched in supermarkets in the UK and, starting last week, Germany.
VFG to relaunch in 2027 as a ‘UPF solution’
VFC Foods is now being funded by both Ahimsa Foundation, its original investor, and Lyons, who said the separation from VFG was drawn up to streamline the business’s structure and allow it to pursue supply chain stability and long-term sustainable growth.
“My return is centred on stabilisation across operations, finance, and commercial delivery,” he said. “The business is now governed, funded, and managed independently, with clear accountability and direct leadership.”
VFC has reported losses of nearly £19M since its establishment in 2020, showing that it hasn’t been immune to the challenges faced by the UK’s plant-based meat market, whose sales dropped by 10% in 2024. The VFC brand has temporarily been taken off shelves, as the company works to fully reformulate its products in response to concerns about ultra-processed foods (UPFs).
“We do not want to be part of the UPF problem – we want to be part of the solution,” said Lyons. “VFC will be repositioned and relaunched in 2027 with this ambition at its core.”
He added that the company continued to trade as normal and is “working closely with retail and manufacturing partners to drive improved operational performance”.
Clive’s Purely Plants, meanwhile, has become the latest casualty of the alternative protein sector, which has seen more than 60 companies acquired, become insolvent, or shut down since September 2024. Within the UK, notable examples include Neat, Beastly Brews, and Allplants, among others.
Green Queen has contacted Matthew Glover, director of the Vegan Food Group, for a comment on the story.
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