The waves of Beyond Meat’s record-breaking IPO have been felt around the world. Last week, at a trade show in Shanghai, Chinese customers flocked to the Beyond Meat booth. This is truly a global sea change.





With this accelerating interest in plant-based meat, we continue to receive an influx of requests from media and the industry inquiring:

How is this new trend received by the Chinese market?

How are the new plant-based meats different from mock meat that has been eaten by Chinese consumers for hundreds of years?

When will these products be available in China and what are the barriers to entry?

GFI’s first-of-its-kind China Plant-based Meat Industry Report 2018 (just released!) seeks to answer all these questions and more.

Here’s a small taste:

In 2018, the market size of the Chinese domestic plant-based meat industry was about 6.1 billion yuan (910 million USD), reflecting a year-on-year increase of 14.2 percent. By comparison, the US market size stood at 684 million USD and exhibited an annual increase of 23 percent;

Over 90 percent of Chinese participants surveyed did not identify as vegan, ovo-lacto vegetarian, or pescatarian, and yet 86.7 percent of the participants had consumed plant-based meat products;

China is a major exporter of plant protein and has massive processing capacity. As of 2016, China had the capacity to process as much as 79 percent of global soy protein isolate, 50 percent of global textured soy protein, and 23 percent of global soy protein concentrate.