The race is on to replace the egg Edmonton's Nabati Foods among the players looking to dominatethe
Question:
The race is on to replace the egg
Edmonton's Nabati Foods among the players looking to dominatethe growing vegan egg market
The Canadian Press
Photo: Nabati Foods
You can scramble them, make French toast with them, or fold theminto an omelette.
You can even bake with Nabati Plant Eggz,as the vegan liquid "egg" product behaves similarly to conventionaleggs in muffin, cookie and cake batter.
And when it comes to taste, Nabati Foods CEO AhmadYehya said the product—made with pea protein andlupin, which is part of the legume family—was about as close as youcan get to the real thing.
"It's simulating an egg. That's what you can do. I'm not God,it's not at that level," Yehya said. "But we can get as close aspossible, and as we continue developing our product, it will onlyget better."
Almost 10 years after California-based BeyondMeat launched its line of vegan meat substitutes andupended the food industry, there is no shortage of veggie burgerpatties, plant-based ground "meat," and simulated chicken fingerson grocery store shelves.
Recently, there have even been suggestions the market isoversaturated. Maple LeafFoods CEO MichaelMcCain said earlier this month his company hadseen a marked decline in sales of plant-based meat substitutions,such as Maple Leaf's Lightlife brand.
Still, with issues such as climate change and animal welfareincreasingly top of mind for consumers, many companies believe theplant-based eating movement has plenty of room for growth. And forsome, the perfect plant-based "egg"—a tricky product to develop butone which, if done right, could revolutionize not just breakfast,but a vast category of baked goods, snack foods and more—is theHoly Grail.
"We've been working on this for two years," said Yehya, whosefamily-owned company is based in Edmonton and launched PlantEggz in late August, joining its existing line of vegancheesecakes, cheese and meat substitutes.
"It's a large piece of the puzzle, and it's very innovative.We're the first Canadian company to do it."
According to market research company Expert MarketResearch, the global vegan egg substitute market couldgrow at a rate of 5.6% per year between 2021 and 2026, reaching avalue of US$1.48 billion.
And as of yet, there aren't a lot of players. So far, SanFrancisco-based food tech startup Eat Just dominates the globalliquid vegan egg market with Just Egg, which launched in 2018 andis made with mung beans. Just Egg arrived in Canada earlierthis year and is available at a numberof grocery chains,including Walmart and Loblaws.
U.K.-based food technologycompany Crackd has also developed a peaprotein-based liquid egg product, which is availableat M&S stores in that country.
In an email, Elissa Zaks, spokeswoman forthe Egg Farmers of Canada, acknowledged therewas market demand for plant-based alternatives. However, she saidplant-based products "are not eggs" and don't provide the sameamount of protein, iron and vitamins as chicken eggs.
"Consumers should know that nutritionally, these plant-basedalternative products fall rather short of providing the samevalue," Zaks said.
Nabati Foods' Plant Eggz product are already availableat Whole Foods in B.C. and Ontario, andat Sobeys in Quebec. The company wentpublic on the Canadian Securities Exchange earlier this year, andbuilt a food manufacturing plant in Edmonton that opened in thespring.
Yehya said the next goal was to expand into global markets.Nabati has already reached a deal with a European distributor, andsome of its products can be found on store shelves in HongKong.
As a major producer of plant protein commodities like peas, soy,hemp, and chickpeas, Canada has the potential to be a world leaderin the plant-based food space, said TylerMcCann, managing director of the CanadianAgri-Food Policy Institute.
That will open up opportunities not just for food tech companieslike Nabati, but for farmers and processors too, McCann said.
"We need to be thinking in the context of supplying not justCanadian consumers, but consumers around the world," McCann said."We need to find ways to grow companies that can be globallycompetitive."
But to do that, Canada needs to significantly build out itsprocessing capacity, said Bill Gruell,president and CEO of Protein IndustriesCanada, a not-for-profit organization whose goal is toposition this country as a global source of high-quality plantprotein and plant-based products.
"We produce about 5 million metric tonnes of peas in Canada onan annual basis, and we process about 500,000 metric tonnes ofpeas," Gruell said. "What we want to do in Western Canada is buildout the processing capacity here at home, so that we can supportorganizations like Nabati to buy the ingredients, the protein thatthey need for the products they're making here."
Up until now, Nabati Foods has sent the raw peas it uses in itsproducts to China for processing, Yehya said. But as new processorscome online, Yehya said Nabati is looking to switch to local,domestic suppliers.
``I see the Prairies as being a hub for plant-based foods,''Yehya said. ``If you're a plant-based manufacturer, being based onthe Prairies and close to your supply chain is going to be the nextthing.'
Cited: “The Race is on to Replace the Egg”
Canadian Grocer November 16, 2021
7.
In addition to the physical product – raw peas, an importantpart of making a plant based egg is the processing. Processing peas is essentially a service, and some companies areprocessing their peas in Canada, and others, like Nabati Foods,send their peas to China to be processed. Using the processing ofpeas as an example, describe two ways in which servicesdiffer from physical products. (4 marks)
QUESTION 5
Recommend an example of both a Push promotion and a Pullpromotion that Nabati Foods could implement to help the salesof Plant Eggz and explain how each example you chose is either aPush or Pull promotion. (4 marks)
Project Management The Managerial Process
ISBN: 9781260570434
8th Edition
Authors: Eric W Larson, Clifford F. Gray