China invested in alternative protein infrastructure long before consumers asked for it and is now reaping the benefits, while the United Kingdom risks falling behind for lack of facilities to scale up, according to Imran Afzal, chief executive of the UK's National Alternative Protein Innovation Centre (NAPIC).
"What China did was remarkable," Afzal said at the Future Food-Tech conference in London. "They were investing in the infrastructure long before there was any consumer demand. They were consistent in their investment and they created momentum." China wrote alternative proteins into its national agricultural planning early on.
The UK's problem, he said, is the step after the laboratory. "The UK is really good at creating food tech companies, but the issue is that after they've been created, they've done the experiments in the lab and it's all worked, it doesn't really mean anything unless you can prove it at a bigger scale." Access to pilot and scale-up plants is limited, so companies sometimes go to China or elsewhere in Europe, which is costly and can mean long waits while a start-up burns through money.
NAPIC funds frontier research and translational projects and helps companies reach the facilities they need. Its Collaborative Programme Funding already backs projects linking UK universities with partners including the Food Standards Agency, Nestlé and The Good Pulse Company, from fermentation-enhanced vegan cheese to recovering protein from Scotch whisky by-products.
Afzal wants food named explicitly in the UK's Modern Industrial Strategy, the government's ten-year plan launched in 2025 for eight high-growth sectors, which mentions advanced manufacturing but not food. He also backs milestone-based funding, in which investors release more money as a company meets agreed targets, because food innovation can take nine or ten years while many investors want their money back within a few. Exits in food tech have become harder to find, he noted.
He expects consumer acceptance to come with time, and said NAPIC believes in a "hybrid protein economy" in which meat-derived proteins keep their place. "Consumers buy for convenience, price and taste. When we get those things right, people will buy them," he said.
Photo: Mk2010 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Source: FoodNavigator
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