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

Sales declines, with spots of growth

• Global retail sales of plant-based meat, seafood, milk, yogurt, ice cream, and cheese totaled an estimated $28.9 billion in 2025, increasing three percent since 2024, according to Euromonitor. Zooming in to just plant-based meat and seafood, global sales were estimated at $6.6 billion in 2025, yet the category grew in some regions and declined in others. Consumer demand for protein is pushing companies to innovate and bring new high-protein foods to market.
• Bright spot
  • Innovation from major food brands: IKEA cafeterias added plant-based pork sausages to their menus in the UK. McDonald’s India launched Protein Plus, a plant-based protein “slice” (including some whey) as an addition to any burger. The Kraft Heinz Not Company, a joint venture from Kraft Heinz and NotCo, released plant-based mac and cheese cups. Danone rolled out Silk Protein, a high-protein blend of the brand’s almond and oat milks with added soy protein.
• Challenge
  • Reformulations to better meet consumer expectations: A few companies are investing in improving existing plant-based meat products to enhance taste, texture, and nutritional profiles, including meeting clean-label and health standards.

The investment landscape is tightening

• Companies operating primarily in the plant-based ecosystem raised $450 million in 2025, according to GFI analysis of data from Net Zero Insights (up from $309 million in 2024). It was an especially challenging year for smaller, emerging brands—particularly in the U.S., where ongoing headwinds in plant-based meat continued to weigh on investor appetite.
• Bright spot
  • Europe leads the way: Investments from public and multilateral players have  helped drive commercialization. In 2025, the European Investment Bank (EIB), backed by the EU’s InvestEU program, provided a €20 million loan to Heura Foods to support R&D and scale-up investments. Other large-scale financings supported production expansion, such as MATR Foods’ €40 million raise, with debt from EIB and participation from Denmark’s Export and Investment Fund.
• Challenge
  • The tighter funding environment accelerates consolidation: At least 19 plant-based companies were bought out or acquired, reflecting a consolidation of product portfolios, technology stacks, and brand equity. At the same time, multiple plant-based companies paused or ceased operations after struggling to secure follow-on financing. As capital coalesces around scalable platforms and differentiated brands, companies struggling to improve unit economics or demonstrate durable demand are increasingly driven to sell assets, IP, or close their operations.

Scientific progress was made on several fronts, but data-sharing is a must

• Crop optimization and sensory performance advances were made, but greater shared, open-access ingredient and formulation data infrastructure is needed for continued progress.

Scientific feasibility

• Bright spot
  • Targeted breeding and technology development: A first-of-its-kind comprehensive review of breeding for plant-based proteins in pulse and legume crops was published by a global group of researchers led by Michigan State University, which reinforced how optimizing crops for digestibility, functionality, and flavor can reduce downstream processing complexity and costs, and ultimately add value to the consumer by enhancing nutritional value, accessibility, and sensory experience.
• Challenge
  • Different processing strategies affect nutritional quality: A summary paper from a team at ETH Zurich unpacked how to “process better” when it comes to plant-based foods, designing streamlined production that optimizes for taste, price, and nutrition using less processed, more complex natural raw ingredients.

Engineering viability

• Bright spot
  • Extrusion research continues to improve both performance and predictability: A collaboration between Korea University and the University of Massachusetts Amherst found that in-line salt solution injection can enhance fibrous network formation and structure in high-moisture plant-based meat products.
• Challenge
  • Expanded characterization approaches: A growing body of research focused on improving tools to better understand how ingredient and process variables translate into sensory and structural outcomes—an important prerequisite for managing process complexity. Studies demonstrated the use of time-domain nuclear magnetic resonance to profile internal structure and cooking dynamics in plant-based burgers.

Innovation capacity

• Bright spot
  • New initiatives on sensory science: Efforts to strengthen sensory validation continued through large-scale, open-access initiatives. NECTAR released its Taste of the Industry 2025 report, more than doubling the number of products, categories, and consumers tested compared to its 2024 study, making it the largest open-access consumer sensory study of plant-based meat to date.
• Challenge
  • The need for open-access ingredient and formulation data: Initiatives to reduce process validation risk increasingly emphasize the need for shared data infrastructure. A new European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) Action was launched to support the development of open-access databases containing comparable techno-functional data for food ingredients.

Many governments are prioritizing plant-based foods, while others are restricting them

• Multiple governments prioritized plant-based foods in their national food strategies, while others placed labeling restrictions on plant-based meat products, making it harder for products to compete.
• Bright spot
  • Countries are prioritizing plant-based foods in their national food strategies: The Chinese government identified food system diversification and the exploration of novel food sources, including plant-based foods, as ongoing priorities.
• Challenge
  • Banning meat-related terms for plant-based foods in Europe: Following several months of debate and negotiations in 2025, EU policymakers agreed in March 2026 to ban the use of the word “meat” and 31 meat-related terms for plant-based, fermentation-enabled, and cultivated options despite consistent survey results demonstrating that European consumers support the use of these terms for plant-based products.