On the 26th of January, it was announced that two giants are joining forces in the plant-based foods space. PepsiCo & Beyond Meat aim ‘to develop, produce and market innovative snack and beverage products made from plant-based protein’. The JV is named PLANeT Partnership, LLC. Financial terms of the deal remain undisclosed.
PepsiCo & Beyond Meat
The partnership is said ‘to leverage Beyond Meat’s leading technology in plant-based protein development and PepsiCo’s world-class marketing and commercial capabilities to create and scale new snack & beverage options’. The plant-based protein market is expected to capture one-tenth of the global meat market, to reach $100bn in value within 15 years.
Beyond Meat & McDonald’s
There have been rumors that McDonald’s have gone quiet on their McPlant platform. Late May going into 2020 McDonald’s had tested its PLT-burger (developed by Beyond Meat) in various outlets in Southern Ontario (Canada) to measure the popularity of such burger. Without giving it too much noise, McDonald’s announced late 2020 that they would ultimately launch their McPlant platform in the course of 2021, without mentioning any partner. This impacted Beyond’s share price significantly (going south), because Beyond shareholders had factored in this partnership.
McPlant
Earlier this week, I read a newsletter article that McDonald’s is finally launching its PLT burger across Europe, in Sweden & Denmark to be precise. This means quietly though, they have not (yet) announced this officially by any form of statement. Albeit, it turns out that they ARE rolling out the trial with the Beyond Burger (!).
Also read this blog post Ramping Up Capacity
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