Local vegan firm set for global growth
● The new owner of vegan food company The Fry Family Food Co is planning a significant expansion of the main factory of the 30year-old Durban group in the wake of strong global demand for plant-based alternatives.
New York- and Zurich-based LIVEKINDLY Co, which is headed by former Unilever SA CEO Kees Kruythoff, will invest R80mR90m in expanding factory infrastructure in Durban as it aims to “dramatically” grow the Fry brand around the world.
In SA, the brand, known for its plantbased nuggets and sausages, has experienced a sharp increase in demand in the past three months, compared to last year. It says sales grew 75%, 103% and 59% for March, April and May, respectively. It says it believes this is due to “an amplified awareness of health” on the part of consumers.
Speaking from the Netherlands, Kruythoff, who also sits on the board of JSE-listed companies Distell and Remgro-owned RCL Foods, says LIVEKINDLY Co plans to “build on the outstanding job” of husband and wife Wally and Debbie Fry, who started the Fry business in their home in Cato Ridge, near Durban, 30 years ago.
He says the plan is to grow the business, which has 400 employees and was acquired for an undisclosed amount in March, to “at least 10 to 20 times bigger than it is”.
The Fry family are in turn involved in LIVEKINDLY Co, having invested in the group.
Plant-based foods are not the domain of niche food production companies alone. Global brand Burger King, for example, has introduced a range of vegetarian foods.
LIVEKINDLY Co has partnered with RCL Foods to use the chicken and food producer’s large platform to also sell plant-based meat
alternatives, particularly to the fastfood sector, which is increasingly offering meat-free products to cater for growing customer demand.
“When they [RCL] go to Nando’s and KFC they can go not only with chicken” but also with a plant-based option. “This will add scale and speed for us to grow,” says Kruythoff.
LIVEKINDLY Co launched on March 9 in the midst of the global coronavirus pandemic, raising $200m (R3.48bn) thanks to an anchor investor, Zurich-based Blue Horizon, funders from the US, Netherlands and SA, and family and friends of Kruythoff.
The group also recently bought two other plant-based food companies, Sweden’s Oumph! and LikeMeat in Germany. These brands will be brought to the South African market “over time”. Fry’s gives the group access to markets in SA, Australia and the UK.
Explaining the rationale behind the Fry acquisition, Kruythoff says the brand is “absolutely fantastic”, with “deep expertise and knowledge about what it is to do plantbased food”.
“They were always a relatively small family business, so for the big dream of changing the global food system from animal- to plant-based, they were actually looking for a partner who could continue to build on their values, but also to scale it up.”
The group’s marketing and communications director, Tammy Fry, who is the daughter of Wally and Debbie and based in Australia, says globally there has been a dramatic increase in veganism thanks to its acceptance in the mainstream media and people turning to it for health benefits.
“We’ve seen with the raising of animals in confined environments, animal agriculture, there are risks of antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria coming up. In fact, 60% of antibiotics in SA are fed to livestock and not human beings.
“I think people are becoming more aware that plant-based meats are not a compromise in terms of taste. You’re also getting a lot of good fibre and equal amounts of protein, if not more, from the alternatives.”
Vegan lifestyles are also trendy due to documentaries on diet and disease such as Netflix’s What the Health, and because athletes are increasingly opting for plant-based options as a “way of improving performance”.
And Fry, a vegan since birth, knows the benefits first hand as she was an elite athlete herself, representing SA in karate for 20 years and winning the Junior World Championship.
“I was powered by plants and through all my training, three to four hours a day, where people thought if you were a vegan you were going to be weak,” she says.
“I grew up with those belief systems all around me and had to constantly break them down and prove otherwise.”
As far as LIVEKINDLY Co’s longer-term plans are concerned, Kruythoff says its goal of becoming a “global pre-eminent plantbased food company” could include an initial public offering in the next three years, in New York.
“As far as changing an animal-based food system into a plant-based food system is concerned, you can really only transform it if your business is global enough,” he says.