Thanks to the likes of Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat, the plant-based meat market in Singapore is thriving. And this is what spurred Timo Recker and Andre Menezes to set up Next Gen Foods in Singapore.
Hailing from Germany, Recker comes from a family that has been in the meat production business for generations. Although business has been successful all this while, Recker realised that the way his family has been thriving via the meat business is not just costly, but also damaging to the environment. Hence, he started his journey towards creating a solution with plant-based alternatives.
“After my studies, I joined my family’s meat factory and I experienced the processes from animal farming to the mass production of meat,” Recker recalls. “I am a meat lover and I love the taste and texture of meat, but I could not identify with this being the future of food,” he tells The Edge Singapore.
Previously the founder of German-based plant-based meat producer LikeMeat, Recker has dabbled in the plant-based meat space. LikeMeat was founded in 2013 and Recker was considered a pioneer in the industry.
The company did well in Europe, expanding to 10 countries there. However, in October 2020, Recker decided it was time to move on to a different market — Asia. He sold LikeMeat to The Livekindly Co and reinvested his profits into Next Gen.
As the sole investor in Next Gen’s seed funding of US$2.2 million ($2.9 million), Recker pulled in fellow co-founder Menezes to grow the new company together.
Menezes too has had significant experience in the industry. Prior to Next Gen, Menezes was the general manager of Country Foods Singapore, Singapore’s biggest meat importer, distributor and processor that is a wholly-owned subsidiary of SATS, better known for providing ground handling services at Changi Airport. At Country Foods, Menezes helped make Impossible Foods a household name in Singapore.
On joining Recker to start NextGen, Menezes says: “I’ve had some seven years in the meat industry. And similar to Recker, I too love meat. But the way it is produced has been the same for over 1,000 years. And we believe that we can do better. Hence this is why we set the bar for ourselves — how can we deliver all the good things about meat as a food in a different way, as well as challenging the way meat is being produced with the current technology?”
Comparing Next Gen’s soy-protein-based “chicken” meat to the real thing, Menezes describes it as “very similar”.
The product aims to not just mimic the taste and texture of a chicken meat, but also cut out harmful components within the meat, such as cholesterol and added hormones.
As it is plant-based, the product is not susceptible to meat-related diseases and allergy-reacting components. Additionally, with the product being highly regulated and grown within a controlled environment, beneficial nutrients can be added, such as higher fibre content.
Similar to the plant-based meats in the market, the product has to be somewhat flexible in the kitchen — chefs would have to be able to use it as a replacement for chicken meat. Next Gen plans to first partner restaurants to get its products out, before venturing into the consumer space.
Although there are already other players in the Asian market, Recker believes that the industry is just getting warmed up. In his eight years in this field, he notes that the whole industry received just some US$500 million in funding in 2019. Yet, as of July 2020, the figure had shot up to more than US$1.5 billion.
“This shows that investors are promoting this space more and the product quality is thriving along with consumer acceptance,” says Recker, who has plans to expand the brand’s footprint into China, US and Europe over the next three years.
Recently, on Feb 25, Next Gen closed a US$10 million seed round, led by investors such as Temasek Holdings, K3 Ventures, the New Ventures arm of the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB), NX Food — part of METRO AG, FEBE Ventures, and Blue Horizon, along with others. The funding from this round will be used for the global launch of Next Gen’s plant-based chicken consumer brand “TiNDLE” in Singapore, expansion into additional Asian cities and continued research and development of new plant-based products.
