CANADA/US – Plant-based companies Meatless Farm and Barvecue have announced plans to build new facilities for their respective business in North America.
Meatless Farm, a UK based firm, said that it is building a new facility in Calgary, which will have the capacity to produce up to 14,500 tonnes of plant protein ingredients by 2023.
The company says its facility with an initial investment of US$12 million will be the first-of-its-kind in Canada and will enable the UK firm expand into producing customised plant proteins for selected external partners across the meat alternatives, bakery, snacks and cereals sectors.
The facility will also host Lovingly Made Ingredients – Meatless Farm’s Canadian Subsidiary.
Morten Toft Bech, founder of Meatless Farm said: “Canada is the pea-capital of the world so it makes sense to have a facility here which will give us the ability in future to grow, harvest, process and extract our pea protein all within one country.
Bringing this under our own operations in Canada will have huge benefits for efficiency, quality, sustainability and innovation and enable us to offer that innovation and manufacturing expertise to other partners too.”
Founded in 2016, the Yorkshire-based company now operates in 24 countries with multiple product lines stocked in six major supermarkets in the UK.
Establishment of the Canadian facility comes after two rounds of over-subscribed fundraising with funds totalling $48 million.
The facility marks an important step in the business’ Farm to Fork programme, which works directly with farmer collectives to source peas and guarantee traceability.
Meatless Farm aims for the plant to be net zero on carbon emissions throughout the supply chain within the first year and will use manufacturing processes to halve its water and energy use.
Barvecue begins construction of plant-based smokehouse
Meanwhile, US meat Alternatives Company Barvecue has started construction of a plant-based smokehouse in Cornelius, North Carolina.
The facility, which the company claims will be the world’s largest plant-based smokehouse, is scheduled to open in July this year and will have an initial capacity to produce 800,000lb of Barvecue’s Pulled BVQ, Chopped BVQ and Naked versions of both, per year.
“As the plant-based meat market surges, so too does the demand for our wood-smoked, plant-based Barvecue,” said Barvecue founder and CEO, Lee Cooper.
“As we grow to keep up with demand for Barvecue products, we decided that it was time to expand production and lead the way in the plant-based barbecue market.”
The company has also announced that it will complete a US$1 million capital raise from current investors this month.
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