State of the Industry Report: Plant-based meat, seafood, eggs, and dairy

Continued collaboration and innovation

• Hundreds of new plant-based meat, seafood, egg, and dairy products hit retail shelves in the U.S. market in 2023, including plant-based steak, sushi, boiled eggs, Wagyu-style beef, ribs, and more. 
• Large companies continued to engage in the sector, including the release of plant-based versions of popular branded products like Tyson nuggets, Nestlé mince meat, Häagen-Dazs products, Kraft Heinz cheese slices, and Kraft Mac & Cheese products.
• Plant-based meat continued to launch on menus at major chains globally including Burger King in Scandinavia, Subway in Europe, Taco Bell in the United Kingdom, and Starbucks in Malaysia.
• New facilities opened in 2023, including SunOpta’s 285,000-square-foot facility in Texas, which will manufacture plant-based milk and creamer. Many more facilities broke ground, such as one for German plant-based food company Planteneers in Illinois, or were announced, such as agricultural company Bunge committing $550 million to build a new facility in Indiana.

Sales trends

• Total U.S. retail plant-based food dollar sales were $8.1 billion in 2023.
• 81% of households that purchased plant-based foods in 2023 purchased more than once throughout the year.
• Plant-based milk held nearly 15% market share of total milk dollar sales in 2023.
• Across the majority of plant-based categories, repeat purchase rates held relatively steady year over year.

Get a full analysis of U.S. plant-based food retail sales.

All-time investment reaches $8.5 billion

• According to our analysis of data from the Net Zero Insights platform, plant-based meat, seafood, egg, and dairy companies raised $907.7 million in 2023 (representing 11% of all-time investment), bringing total private investments in the sector to $8.5 billion. 
• The number of unique investors in plant-based companies grew by 10% to more than 1,293 unique investors.

Continued ingredient and process innovation

• Key technological themes that scientific innovation centered around included new sources of plant-based ingredients, new ways to cultivate these plants, and novel processes to optimize taste, texture, and nutrition. 
• Advances were made in ingredient development, from new animal-free fats and emulsifiers to novel aquatic, leguminous, and upcycled protein sources.
• Improved scalability of traditional texturization methods like extrusion was achieved, and promising newer bottom-up methods like fiber spinning and a patent-pending “process-controlled microstructure design” expanded available technologies for scalable plant-protein texturization.

Increased public funding and support

• Canada continued its investment leadership with C$150 million ($110 million) in public funding that will support plant-based protein market growth. 
• The United Kingdom and Germany both announced large commitments to alternative protein R&D and commercialization. Government support of alternative protein startups and product development was announced in Brazil, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, and more.
• Denmark and South Korea released national action plans for building their industries.
• The United Nations Environment Programme released a report at COP28 that confirmed plant-based foods’ potential to benefit the climate, environment, and global health, and provided a comprehensive list of supportive policies governments might adopt to speed their development and deployment.