Unilever’s struggle to sell The Vegetarian Butcher and Nestlé and Monde Nissin’s slowing meat alternative sales are bad news for the plant-based market.

In the span of seven months, the CEOs of Nestlé, Monde Nissin, and Unilever have all left their roles amid weak sales, as the company’s boards look to accelerate strategy executions with fresh leadership.

Each of these Big Food companies owns some of the largest plant-based meat brands in the world, which have been a talking point in their financial discourse. The bottom line is, it feels like they’re not getting what they want out of meat alternatives.

Quorn, the mycoprotein pioneer that Monde Nissin acquired a decade ago, has been struggling for several years now, posting double-digit losses in the last quarter after sales hit a six-year-low the year before.

Nestlé, which pulled its Garden Gourmet brand from the UK in two separate instances, has been forced to slim its meat-free offerings under the Sweet Earth brand.

And Unilever, whose CEO Hein Schumacher is stepping down this weekend, is in a bind with The Vegetarian Butcher. The CPG giant has been looking to offload the vegan meat brand as part of its strategy to “prune” its vast portfolio, and is facing an uphill battle to find buyers at attractive prices.

It paints a dim picture of the plant-based meat industry. Big Food hopped on the bandwagon in the late 2010s on the back of the explosive success of Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, but now, it’s stuck in limbo with meat alternatives.

Quorn sales shrink further as Nestlé withdraws alt-meat offerings

In September, company accounts showed that the pre-tax losses of Marlow Foods – the parent division of Quorn and Cauldron Foods – quadrupled in 2023, surpassing £60M. And while the business slashed its selling and distribution costs by nearly half, the soaring cost of goods caused its gross profit to plunge from £65M in 2022 to just £1.4M in 2023.

Shortly after, Quorn CEO Marco Bertacca stepped down and was replaced by former Heineken UK managing director David Flochel, who called 2025 a “reset year” for the firm.

However, according to Monde Nissin’s latest earnings report published on the Philippines Stock Exchange, Quorn’s losses kept widening in the latter half of 2024, from single-digit declines in Q3 to a decrease in the mid-teens in Q4, compared to the corresponding periods in 2023. The company said it “continues to operate in a challenging environment”, but in spite of the topline weakness, it expected to achieve positive EBITDA – revenue excluding all non-operational expenses – in Q4.

Still, Monde Nissin noted that it may book £80-100M in impairment charges for Quorn – these are reductions in the recoverable value of an asset. “Although substantial, this figure is notably lower than last year’s impairment,” the company said. (It wrote down £145M in 2023 and £290M in 2022, and has pledged to make up the impairment value for Quorn every year until 2032).

Quorn remains one of the best-selling meat-free brands in the world, though its financial turmoil in recent years is a marker of the troubles that befall plant-based companies today.

It’s a problem illustrated by the world’s largest food company too. Nestlé CEO Laurent Freixe – who was appointed in August – has said that the business excessively focused on meat alternatives, subsequently finding that the market wasn’t as big as initially thought, according to Reuters.

A Nestlé representative told the news agency that its Sweet Earth label now only sells bowls like General Tso’s tofu and bulgogi, having discontinued items like plant-based chicken strips and bacon.

Can Unilever find the right price for The Vegetarian Butcher?

Faltering sales have also decreased the value of industry-leading brands. You’d think the plant-based meat supplier to Burger King and Subway in multiple markets would be hot property for potential buyers, but Unilever is finding it hard to offload The Vegetarian Butcher at the price it wants.

Sky News reported in November that Unilever had hired Piper Sandler to run an auction for the sale of the Dutch vegan business, with “a number of potential buyers” in talks for the deal. Unilever declined to comment on “market rumour or speculation” when approached by Green Queen.

The move followed the consumer goods company’s decision to scale back a number of its key climate goals and focus on its “power brands”, which collectively represent over three-quarters of its turnover. It had already begun demerging its ice cream units in India and Indonesia, and is mulling a sale of its global ice cream division, which includes Ben & Jerry’s and Magnum.

But Reuters reports that The Vegetarian Butcher – which Unilever bought in 2018 – only records around €50M in annual sales and is loss-making, according to analysts, who suggest that it may appeal to trade buyers like meat producers looking to diversify into plant-based alternatives.

Unilever this week ousted Schumacher who said the board was keen to “step up the pace of our strategy execution and realise swift value creation underscored by a change in leadership”, installing CFO Fernando Fernandez as the new chief executive.

Big Food losing faith as UPF discourse heats up

These are the latest signs of uncertainty for plant-based companies, whose sales and valuations have been hurt by the ultra-processed food (UPF) debate. Consumers have been moving towards fresher, more ‘natural’ foods, leaving processed meat analogue makers like Quorn and The Vegetarian Butcher scrambling.

These sentiments have been heightened by new US health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr’s anti-UPF rhetoric, and sustained misinformation campaigns led by meat lobby groups.

All this has led several commentators to mourn an apparent demise of the industry, which they ascribe to an “anti-vegan backlash”. But for all the criticism, while retail sales of meat alternatives have continued to decline in the US, they grew by 3% between 2022 and 2023 in Europe’s largest markets.

For the world’s biggest food companies, plant-based meat still remains an impediment to their aggressive growth strategies, and that’s a problem for the alternative protein sector.

Could a sales turnaround for Quorn and a successful exit for The Vegetarian Butcher convince investors and businesses otherwise?

The post Plant-Based Struggles: Unilever, Nestlé & Monde Nissin Reassess Meat-Free Ambitions appeared first on Green Queen.

This post was originally published on Green Queen.

Beyond Meat is making cutbacks and suspending its China business after revenues jumped in Q4, with the plant-based leader taking aim at regenerative agriculture.

Californian plant-based pioneer Beyond Meat will lay off 9% of its global workforce, including most of its China employees and “changes to the executive leadership team”, after increasing revenues and narrowing losses in Q4 2024.

The company will reduce its North American and EU headcount by 44, in addition to making 20 employees redundant in China, where it will suspend operations by mid-2025. The move is part of its strategy to reduce operating costs, and one that “is not done lightly”, according to CEO Ethan Brown.

It comes after the firm posted $76.7M in revenues in Q4, a 4% hike from the corresponding period in 2023 – it was Beyond Meat’s second consecutive quarter of year-on-year revenue growth, following two years of declines. It simultaneously cut losses by 71% in the final quarter of 2024, reaching $45M.

For the full year of 2024, too, net losses shrunk to $160M, a 52% improvement from the year before. And while overall revenues were down by 4.9% at $326.5M, “the rate of decline slowed substantially versus the previous two years”, noted Brown. Moreover, the Beyond Burger maker recorded a gross profit of $41.7M, versus a loss of $82.7M a year prior, thanks to a major reduction in selling costs.

This year, Beyond Meat predicts its revenues for Q1 to be comparable to the corresponding period last year, and expects full-year sales between $320M and $335M.

The business has outlined four priorities for 2025: delivering comparable annual top-line revenues, improving gross margin to 20% (versus 13% last year), further reducing operating expenses over the next two years, and improving liquidity and optimising its capital structure to strengthen its balance sheet.

“[We] remain highly confident in our ability to lead the category through what has been a challenging correction born in manufactured ambiguity, and believe unequivocally in the inevitable and central role that plant-based meat will play in our global future,” Brown told investors in an earnings call.

Price hikes and international foodservice deliver wins

Beyond Meat’s improvement in performance was driven by growth in the US retail and international foodservice channels. The company saw an increase in net revenue per pound due to lower discounts and price hikes on certain products, though its volumes were down due to ” weak category demand” in the US and “lower sales of ground beef and chicken products” in global supermarkets.

In its home country, retail sales were up by 5.7%, representing its biggest channel. Foodservice revenues decreased by 2%, meanwhile, largely due to “lower burger sales to a large QSR customer”.

Internationally, revenues in the retail channel trimmed slightly by 1.7%, while climbing by 9% in foodservice, thanks to an increase in sales of Beyond Chicken to a large QSR chain.

Brown was optimistic about Beyond Meat’s fortunes in France, where it introduced Veggie McPlant Nuggets at over 1,500 McDonald’s locations. “Moreover, in France, beginning this month, we launched Beyond Steak in retail,” he said.

Other areas of international expansion came via the debut of its Smash Burger at Tesco and the rollout of its steak at Mexican-inspired chain Tortilla in the UK, alongside the introduction of the Plant Burger at Wendy’s in Georgia.

Misinformation won’t deter Beyond Meat’s health push

Asked what a Beyond Meat customer looks like today, Brown said the company is “getting much more focused on the health-oriented consumer”, reflecting its renewed nutrition focus in product development and marketing. “It is extraordinarily important to me that this product furthers human health,” the CEO said.

He highlighted the numerous “puts and takes” about where the plant-based category is headed – particularly with the ultra-processed foods debate, which has magnified since the appointment of Robert F Kennedy Jr as health secretary – though he underlined that consumer interest in Beyond Meat remains “extremely high”.

“There’s also a very strong countercurrent, which is this narrative around being highly processed and full of questionable ingredients, which is a manufactured narrative,” said Brown. “It’s not one that actually has science behind it or much truth to it.”

He added: “But it is a very powerful incumbent industry campaign that’s gotten picked up by certain punnets and what we call the carnivores on Instagram and podcasts that are misinformed. And so our consumer is increasingly […] more educated, someone who can see through that noise, and they are the ones that are carrying us back to growth.”

While misinformation and misdirection “do a serious disservice” to consumers looking to make positive changes, Brown is resolute that Beyond Meat would stay its course and ultimately prevail.

“I’m very confident over time that percentage will continue to increase where […] Beyond Meat makes sense,” he said. “I can have a burger and I can have 75% less saturated fat. I can have fat from avocado oil versus stuff that’s going to fill my arteries and require me to have my chest opened up when I’m 60 years old.

“I mean, knock yourself out if that’s the outcome you want, but if you want a different outcome, come over to Beyond Meat and have a burger that tastes great and has a clean source of oil… Again, if you don’t want that, don’t have it. But if you’re concerned about your health and want to have a great dinner, go ahead and get Beyond Steak and have it. I mean, it just makes sense.”

Beyond Meat CEO slams ‘regenerative beef’

The cost of plant-based meat has become increasingly important over the last couple of years, even surpassing taste or health for some consumers. In the US, meat alternatives have a 77% price premium over conventional meat, with the smallest gap seen in beef (20%).

Beyond Meat itself raised prices with its new Beyond IV lineup of products last year. Brown pinpointed volume as the major factor behind the difference in costs. While the company did reach price parity for a product line “with a particular customer in a particular market”, it’s focusing on providing “very clean, very simple, very healthy ingredients to the consumer”, according to Brown.

“There are other products that lend themselves more to reaching [price parity] and primarily in the food service category,” he said. “So it does remain a goal, maybe it’s a little more differentiated and sector-specific than it was at the onset.”

Expanding on the cost question, Brown noted that animal agriculture is facing some existential threats: “If you look at the beef prices today, they’re starting to rise. What’s that about?” US consumer price index data shows that beef was 13% more expensive in January than it was two years ago. “In part, that’s about drought,” he said. “So that’s not something that a government or industry can solve.”

Speaking of the government, RFK Jr has been a major proponent of regenerative farming, which can have several benefits for soil and nature. However, the Beyond Meat CEO pointed to Big Beef’s misuse of the term, which climate activists have outlined as a greenwashing tactic.

“All of this posturing around: ‘We’re going to do regenerative agriculture.’ Any serious scientists around regenerative beef will tell you that’s just a non-starter. Sure, you can have some beef out on the pasture, but you have to have far, far less,” said Brown. “So that’s not going to serve to provide a global protein solution.”

Would Beyond Meat embrace cultivated fats?

During the call, Brown addressed a question about whether Beyond Meat would consider ‘hybrid’ or ‘blended’ proteins, mixing its plant-based meat with cultivated fats. “We certainly look at everything. We’re agnostic to technology. It’s really about the outcome,” Brown said.

“But I think the trend is actually in the opposite direction. How simple can we make these products? How much can we assure the consumer that the noise they’re hearing about being processed is an incumbent industry trying to protect itself?”

He continued: “We’re coming out of the trough where we’re starting to go up what they call the slope of enlightenment in innovation literature. And what will bring the consumer back is a fundamental understanding that this is a very simple and clean product, tastes great, and it’s really good for you. And the more and more consumers understand that, the more you see the market come back.”

The post Beyond Meat to Suspend China Operations, Cut 9% of Its Workforce As Q4 Earnings Improve appeared first on Green Queen.

This post was originally published on Green Queen.