Global agri-food company Bunge Limited recently announced a new AU$45.7 million investment in Australian Plant Proteins (APP), which works in the extraction of protein from the faba bean, also known as the broad bean. This strategic investment is designed to support the growth of the plant-based market in Australia and enable APP to double its production of plant protein isolates by March 2022.
APP will use the new funding, among other things, to expand the capacity of its production facility, which only opened last year, to meet the ever-increasing demand for non-GMO plant proteins. With this minority investment, Bunge will be the exclusive distributor for APP in the Americas and will have the option to license APP’s proprietary processing technology outside of Australia.
“Securing investment and distribution agreements with a large multinational company like Bunge, alongside our existing partnership with Scalzo Foods in Australia and New Zealand, is a testament to the value and continued growth in demand for high quality, plant-based protein options,” says Brendan McKeegan, APP co-founder and director.
“By combining APP’s proprietary extraction technology with our application expertise and global sales and distribution networks, we provide a significant competitive advantage in making high-quality plant protein available to customers around the world,” says Kaleb Belzer, VP, Protein Business at Bunge.