Swedish dairy-free business Stockeld Dreamery has ceased operations against the backdrop of the wider slump in plant-based sales.
In a posting on LinkedIn yesterday (23 October), founder and CEO Sorosh Tavakoli confirmed the business had closed.
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“We finally got into Whole Foods… only to decide to shut down the business. It’s not the ending I imagined after six years of building Stockeld Dreamery but it’s the right one,” he said.
Set up in Stockholm in 2019 as Noquo Foods before later rebranding, Stockeld sold two dairy alternative products: Cultured Cream Cheese, made from lentils and chickpeas, and Melt Cultured Slices, made from cultured legumes.
In his social media post, Tavakoli said “the intense decline in plant-based these last years made it nearly impossible for an independent cheese company to grow”.
He added: “Even worse, our ambitions to sell our cheese to dairy eaters feel[s] further away than ever. As we prepared for another fundraise, we saw that we simply didn’t have the momentum to justify more capital, so we decided to close in a responsible way.”
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By GlobalDataTavakoli said the business was looking for “a new home” for its IP and “would welcome others who might be interested”.
Stockeld had been selling its products in the US in over 500 sale points across 30 states, according to its website. These included on- and off-trade locations, such as Plantega and Apollo Bagels in New York.
It had also secured a listing at 17 Whole Foods locations in New York City and a deal with US grocery delivery service Fresh Direct, according to the agri-food investment news outlet AgFunderNews.
“We’ll gradually be taken off menus and shelves in the next few months,” Tavakoli said on LinkedIn.
The group had also been selling in the ICA retailer in Sweden but no products were available online at the time of writing. Just Food has asked the CEO to confirm when the business stopped selling in the country.
Stockeld’s closure is one of several downbeat developments this year in the plant-based dairy category.
In June, Bel Group said it planned to stop selling its dairy-free Nurishh brand by the end of the year, and cited difficulties in making the dairy alternative profitable.
The move was due to result in the closure of its Saint-Nazaire production site, with around 30 employees set to lose their jobs.
Bel, the owner of the cheese brands The Laughing Cow and Boursin, acquired the site when it bought a majority stake in Saint-Nazaire-based All In Foods in 2020.
Despite the decision to discontinue Nurishh, Bel reiterated its commitment to the category, reaffirming that “plant-based remains a key pillar of our strategy”.
In January, Amsterdam-based alt-dairy manufacturer Willicroft also confirmed it had ceased trading after failing to meet fundraising targets.
