Alternative seafood is a hot topic in the food space. Consumers want more options and as a lesser tapped market than meat or dairy, there is huge innovation potential in this sector.
Plant-based giant Impossible Foods has already announced it has started working on fish products. Meanwhile, the alternative seafood company, Good Catch, secured $32 million in financing for its plant-based seafood (2020)
It’s not just big players that are jumping on the seafood train though. Entrepreneurs around the world are setting up startups focusing on developing seafood, and with good reason. Take Hooked, Shiok Meats, Avant Meats, Finless Foods, Kuleana, and New Wave Foods for example.
Currently, plant-based seafood makes up just 1% ($9.5 million) of total plant-based meat sales in the US. Approximately 91% of those sales come from the frozen section.
A consumer survey by ProVeg shows that it is one of the key areas for innovation in the food space and also what consumers are interested in. In short, plant-based seafood is the white space on the market.
An innovative solution to a global problem
Alternative seafood is much more than a good business idea or the latest food trend; it’s a solution to a real, global problem. Nearly 90% of the world’s marine fish stocks are fully exploited, overexploited, or depleted.
From 1990 to 2018, there was a 122% increase in the amount of fish being eaten by people globally. In 2016, 150-million tonnes of seafood was produced for human consumption.
We held a webinar in December, 2020, in partnership with NX-Food, where we immersed ourselves into the topic of alternative seafood. Experts from Shiok Meats, Avant Meats, Hooked, and Hatch spoke about what the future holds for this industry.
Sandhya Sriram, CEO and Co-founder of Shiok Meats:
“Cell-based seafood is the future. I am not talking about the distant future, but the next three to five years! The seafood in the ocean is depleting at an alarming rate and with the tremendous growth in population, we need huge amounts of sustainable, nutritious, and delicious protein to feed us all in the coming years. Cell-based seafood is the answer to that. Shiok Meats and I are extremely happy to bring cell-based crustaceans soon to your tables.”
