Steggles owner Baiada hatches new plant-based food range

Poultry giant Baiada has become the latest company to launch a plant-based food range - but don’t call it fake meat.

The new frozen range joins Greens & Goodness’ existing line of chilled range of meals and snacks. Picture: Supplied

Steggles owner Baiada is launching a range of plant-based schnitzels, kievs, nuggets and other products as demand for protein soars globally and the Ukraine war drives up costs for poultry producers.

The private family-owned company - one of the country’s two largest poultry producers with Inghams with $1.8bn of annual revenue - began developing its new plant-based range under its new Greens & Goodness brand more than a year ago, filing its trademark in April, 2021.

But unlike the emergence of other plant-based brands - most notably the arrival of the Bill Gates-baked Impossible Foods earlier this year - Baiada isn’t marketing its new range as fake meat, and is using pea-based protein rather than the usual soy.

Baiada head of marketing Yash Gandhi said the products would be part of a standalone category and it was not about plant-based protein seeking to emulate poultry.

“If you look at the plant-based category overall, there’s kind of two ends to the spectrum,” Mr Gandhi said.

Baiada isn’t marketing its new range as fake meat, and is using pea-based protein to make products including the nuggets. Picture: Supplied

“On one end you’ve got your Impossibles and Beyond (another plant-based burger) trying to be more like meat and meaty texture and putting beetroot into it to give it that kind of blood oozing out of the burgers. And then on the other end of the spectrum, you’ve got your Wildly Goods, which are overtly using vegetables.

“Where we have positioned Greens & Goodness is bang on in the middle, where it is good food that happens to be plant-based”.

It comes amid speculation that Baiada’s owners are considering a potential sale or initial public offering of the company, which has been in family hands since Celestino Baiada founded the business after moving to Australia from Malta in 1916 and branching out in NSW as a poultry farmer.

For Baiada, the move into plant-based products represents a shift in how Australians - which eat almost 50 kilograms of chicken a year, about 47 per cent of all meat consumption - consume protein and the growing acceptance to try alternatives to land-based meat.

The plant-based industry is seeking to emulate the success of salmon producers, which in the past 15 years has transformed from being mainly a seasonal food to being available all-year round with annual production surging from about 20,000 tonnes to more than 80,000 tonnes, according to federal government figures.

And despite criticism that plant-based “meat” products are highly processed, Australia has become the third-fastest growing market for the category globally, generating about $185m in sales in 2019-20, and is forecast to hit $3bn by 2030, according to Austrade.

Greens & Goodness range will include a schnitzel. Picture: Supplied

For poultry producers, despite providing Australia’s most popular meat choice, it represents diversification. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in March, broiler farmers have been slugged with higher feed costs after grain exports have been restricted from the Black Sea region. Inghams said in a market update in April that the war had “added to an already tight global grain stocks situation keeping global prices at historically high levels”.

“Those pressures are felt throughout the industry,” Mr Gandhi said.

“It is having an impact overall just in terms of commodity prices but … when it comes to plant-based food, it’s more a choice from a consumer point-of-view to choose to eat better and people are happy to a pay a bit more as long as they get taste, flavour and texture and they’re not compromising on that.

“When it comes to poultry, it will still remain the most affordable protein option available on the shelf and when it comes to plant-based there are various options, however this (Greens & Goodness) is without compromise.”

Baiada, which also produces Lilydale Free Range Chicken, launched its plant-based range across Woolworths’ freezer section last month, with products including schnitzels, kievs, nuggets and spicy Bombay dippers.

Originally published as Steggles owner Baiada hatches new plant-based food range