The potential is still there: Thai food industry experts are still confident in the appeal of plant-based meat despite slow uptake

Plant-based players have highlighted consumer acceptance and pricing challenges as major hurdles to overcome in the past year. This has led many to speculate whether the plant-based sector is ‘over’, especially with big players in the United States such as Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods facing multiple operational and management challenges in recent times. However, food industry experts in Thailand are confident that plant-based meat is not out of the picture and still has a firm future. “The plant-based meat industry may have seen some slowing in the past year, but it is still very much there and the potential is still strong,”​ Food Science and Technology Association of Thailand (FoSTAT) President Professor Anadi Nitithamyong told FoodNavigator-Asia​. “The main concern currently is that growth is not as fast as we initially expected, and this was because when the marketing of plant-based meat started this was as an replacement to meat, and consumers would get disappointed when ...