U.K. town specializing in fake meat

Surrounded by some of England’s most fertile farmland, the small town of Boston will become Europe’s fake-meat capital next month with the opening of a giant factory making plantbased burgers and sausages.

Plant & Bean Ltd.’s new factory, the largest in Europe, will eventually churn out 55,000 tons a year of alternate protein products. That will provide the faux-meat industry with the scale to narrow the price and quality gap with conventional meat products, according to Chief Executive Officer Edwin Bark.

“We need to reduce the cost and that comes by increasing scale,” Bark said in an interview. “The gap with animal meat is really too big in key markets. You can completely understand that for families to buy plant-based products regularly is still a challenge.”

Alternate protein demand has boomed in recent years as climate change and health concerns drive consumers to products like fake burgers or nuggets. The industry has attracted huge venture-capital investment, while food giants from McDonald’s Corp. to Nestle SA are rolling out their own product ranges. Still, sales remain a fraction of the $1.4 trillion global meat market.

The new factory is in an old Lincolnshire wool-trading town that lies about 100 miles north of London. Some inhabitants emigrated in the 17th century to help found the city of Boston, Mass.

Plant & Bean, formerly known as the meat-free division of The Brecks Company Ltd., is currently seeking funds to open more plants. That includes a large-scale facility in the U.S. next year, with others to follow in China and Thailand in 2022. After that comes Brazil, a hub for the traditional meat industry.

The company mainly uses non-genetically modified soy to make its products but is keen to explore other sources of protein, including fava beans, mung beans and peas, Bark said. That includes working with its partners to cut the cost of peas and beans by 50%.

The covid-19 pandemic has hastened the adoption of plantbased meat in people’s diets, said Bark, a former European managing director at Nestle’s plant-based food division.