There’s an argument to be had that plant-based seafood alternatives are literally dead in the water judging by the number of companies that have fallen by the wayside or have quietly disappeared.
Nevertheless, there remains an element of optimism over the category’s prospects but the chances of success will rest on new technologies to produce a product with the same look, texture, taste and health credentials – and at the right price point to challenge the real deal.
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The industry as it stands is still some way off that, particularly for products made using extrusion, which is commonly employed right across the alternative-protein sector. One solution might be cultivated seafood but the jury is still out.
“I think everyone’s realised that the challenge in plant-based seafood is that it’s very hard to get that like-for-like replacement. You need to be looking at better technology,” says Devika Suresh, the head of the incubator programme at ProVeg International.
“The issue right now is that there’s some tech-like 3D printed fish, for instance, but the price point is nowhere comparable to regular seafood. If there is some company that comes up with a tech that can make plant-based seafood texturised and accessible at a price point there might be a future.”
Drop in the ocean
Whichever way alternative seafood develops the category is going to remain small and niche relative to the size of plant-based meats and a drop in the ocean to real seafood. Some would also argue the terminology is wrong – an alternative should be offered as just that rather than trying to replicate or copy the real thing. There, the chances of success look gloomy.
Nick Cooney, a managing partner at New York-based investor Lever VC, says plant-based companies – whether meat or seafood – have found the going “tough” in recent years, with many not even turning a profit. Quality has been poor, particularly when it comes to taste and texture.
Consumers have also been put off by the types of ingredients, often long lists, and the use of binders, when people are increasingly searching out clean-label foods, he suggests, referring to other commonalities across all protein alternatives.
Even with favourable credentials, alternative seafood is only likely to command a fraction of the seafood market, say 1-2%, and that prospect is still years away, Cooney adds.
“I think there’s basically no market right now, so I wouldn’t view it as much of a revamp case. Or it’s a trivial market. It’s more a question of can it go from being a virtually non-existent market to a real market?” he says, estimating the potential in the tens of millions of dollars in North American but probably below $50m.
“We’re not talking about it gobbling up a huge chunk of the seafood sector. But I think if you have roughly similar penetration on the seafood side as you have on the chicken side, or even a third of what you have on the beef side, it would be a sizeable category.
“In the short and medium term, if you have an Impossible Foods-style quality product in the seafood space, it could do in seafood what Impossible is doing on the beef side but ratchet it down for the size of the seafood sector.”
Funding gap
Funding, or lack of it, is one issue overshadowing seafood alternatives, especially to foster innovation and R&D, according to Good Food Institute Europe.
The non-profit think tank recently conducted analysis that found there have been “huge increases” in research funding and the number of alternative-protein patents but only 2% of the former and 1% of the latter were channelled towards seafood.
Carlotte Lucas, its head of industry and special projects, says: “While we have seen welcome examples of innovation and collaboration, alternative seafood lags far behind efforts to develop alternative chicken, beef or pork products, and it’s clear that far more work is needed.
“Public funding bodies need to recognise this food’s capacity to contribute to Europe’s food security in the face of unsustainable fishing levels and prioritise the development of tasty and affordable alternative seafood.”
Tasty is one of the operative words that has plagued protein alternatives for many years and in the case of meat has led to the demise of many companies because products didn’t live up to expectations. Efforts to replicate the real deal generally failed and put off consumers on the first try.
“Consumers won’t swap their tuna, salmon and cod for plant-based options unless these products meet their expectations on taste, price and nutrition, and companies and governments need to recognise alternative seafood as a way of future-proofing supply chains by investing in delicious and affordable options now,” Lucas suggests.
“Alternative seafood has the potential to capture a much larger share of the market and provide consumers with a more diverse range of options but far more publicly-funded research work will be needed to develop products that can come closer to consumer expectations.”
Alternative – not a swap
Sophie’s Kitchen, set up in 2010 in California, was one of the victims and even its co-founder Eugene Wang is critical about why many seafood alternatives failed. He agrees they should remain just that.
Wang sold the business to a Canadian investor in 2019, which then wound up the company in 2023-24. He has now formed Sophie’s Bio, which produces alternative-protein ingredients via precision fermentation using chlorella, a single-cell water algae often supplied as a nutrient food supplement.
Sophie’s Kitchen originally targeted vegans and vegetarians who have limited options but “when you talk about flexitarians and everybody else, then alternative seafood is never going to make the cut”, he says.
Real seafood has certain characteristics embedded from sea water and plankton, while alternatives lack those characteristics as well as the sea taste, the fishy smell and nutrition credentials like omega-3 and other fatty acids such as eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), Wang argues.
“That’s why seafood alternatives never took off,” he says. “Unless there’s some technological breakthrough years from now, it will just be another alternative.
“It’s not just the alternative-seafood sector, it’s also the meat-alternative sector. They’re trying to replicate what’s already there. They’re setting the bar too high. If we’re trying to make ourselves look like them, then you’re losing your game already.”
Wang does, however, believe there is a future for seafood alternatives using new forms of ingredients and technologies without the goal to mimic real seafood because seafood lovers will not accept alternatives and aren’t necessarily concerned about the environmental issues.
He uses the example of tofu and Chinese monks 2,000 years ago. “They were trying to make a plant-based version of meat but because the technology was not there, they cannot really replicate the texture. But then people started to use it in dishes, just like the way they use meat,” he says.
“That’s my idea for plant-based seafood. Plant-based seafood should be the nutrition from the ocean but it doesn’t have to simulate the shape or the flavour of the sea animals.”
New tech
New School Foods in Canada is one company trying to turn the tables. CEO Chris Bryson set up the business in 2021 and is using a different process to extrusion to produce alternative proteins, including salmon.
He says extrusion is fine for ground beef but it cannot create the fibrous structures and textures found in other protein forms such as seafood and steak. The company employs what Bryson calls a “free-structuring technology” or scaffold, which he claims is able to create muscle fibres and connective tissue.
“I would argue that texture really is, from an R&D perspective, the most challenging thing to solve, certainly more so than taste,” he says, adding that New School Foods’ salmon is clean label.
Bryson agrees the alternative-seafood market is likely to remain small based on the proposition that real seafood is a tenth the size of meat in North America. Therefore, plant-based seafood would end up being a tenth the size of plant-based meat, he suggests but with an element of optimism.
“In terms of plant-based seafood being dead in the water, I would say it feels dead in the water from an investment perspective but we don’t feel that way when it comes to market reception,” he argues.
“This comes back to product quality and whether or not your product has a value proposition that is attractive to the market. I don’t think consumers are opposed to alternatives as a category, although a lot of scepticism has been introduced around it.”
Bryson expands: “If we had products that were affordable, that were the same price, that tasted just as good, that had the same nutritional benefits, would consumers flock to it? I do think they would.
“It’s just achieving that parity with the sensorial experience and then superiority when it comes to nutritional positioning. That’s very difficult to achieve as a complete package at a price that is the same.
“Achieving a product that has a great value proposition is possible but more R&D is required. Only then will you have products that can access a mass-market category.”
Cultivated seafood doubts
Key is whether cultivated seafood or cell-cultured seafood might stand a better chance of success than its plant-based cousin.
Wang at Sophie’s Bio has reservations. “Based on the technology I know they’re developing right now, they never have a chance. They’re never going to be like the real one,” he argues.
“For [cell-based] beef and also cell-based seafood, the number one thing they couldn’t conquer is the structure, the texture. The texture they never had, the technology nailed down to simulate the real beef or the real seafood.”
Cooney at Lever VC suggests there are similar challenges around all the protein alternatives.
“If I were starting a company and trying to raise capital and I was deciding plant-based meat or seafood, or cultivated meat or seafood, what’s going to be easier? I don’t think one of those quadrants is easier than the other. I think they’re all roughly difficult.
“In the long term, cultivated has the potential to ultimately get to a much larger share of market because it is the real thing. It’s just produced in a different way.”
ProVeg, meanwhile, remains supportive of plant-based seafood even though the future is unlikely to be smooth sailing.
But Suresh suggests restaurants might be a better avenue than retail to drum up consumer interest and loyalty, a path New School Foods is taking.
“At ProVeg, we see it as an opportunity because it’s a huge innovation white space that people need to be coming in and working on,” she says. “We’ll continue to support start-ups that want to come up in that space, as tricky as it is. But there’s no denying it’s a really challenging and tough space right now.”
Bryson at New School Foods suggests there is still a way to go before plant-based seafood can comfortably sit side by side with real seafood on retail shelves even though he claims the company’s salmon “at least looks like it belongs in the same family”.
For plant-based seafood, extrusion has still to crack the code of moving from a raw and semi-translucent looking state during cooking to the opaqueness you get with real fish, he says, although New School Foods scaffolding process has achieved that.
“I don’t think plant-based seafood is anywhere close to being put physically side by side real seafood. Consumers and grocery stores have realised these products really aren’t equivalent yet in terms of price, taste and nutrition, so only when that happens will we ever position them side by side,” he explains.
“I do think one day plant-based seafood could be positioned next to real seafood but it’s probably going to take some sort of government or consumer pressure to make that happen. And it’s only ever going to happen if they look the part as well.”
