Australia’s plant-based protein company, v2food has successfully raised A$72 million (US$53 million) in its latest funding round with major investors that include Europe’s largest investment fund, Astanor Ventures and an ‘unnamed’ China’s leading e-commerce platform. v2food plans to use the new fund to scale-up manufacturing and broaden its global reach across Asia and into Europe.
v2food focus now is on business development and scaling up production to meet global demand.
v2food CEO Nick Hazell said, “Adding to our existing Sydney HQ, we have officially opened operations in China and appointed our new China general manager Cyrus Pan to build the brand locally across Asia.”
The company recently announced its launch into the Chinese market, with its first batch of products including a new iteration of v2mince, resembling pork. It has already got a foothold in New Zealand, Thailand, the Philippines, Japan and Korea.
According to investment fund Astanor Ventures partner Hendrik Van Asbroek, “V2food, with its world-class team and scientific expertise, is the right company to deliver this new generation of alternative meat across the globe.”
New and existing investors of v2food also include Altitude Partners, China Renaissance, Esenagro, Horizons Ventures, Marinya Capital, Novel Investments, Sequoia Capital China and Temasek.
v2food was the result of a ‘beautiful’ partnership between Jack Cowin’s Competitive Foods Australia (CFAL) and CSIRO deep tech venture fund Main Sequence. CFAL is one of the largest restaurant franchisers in Australia. Cowin’s group of companies includes meat processing company Comgroup, Domino’s Pizza Enterprises and PMFresh.
The goal of v2food is to transform it from an Australian to an international business starting with Asia and now into Europe.
