Wal-Mart will work with Qishan Foods to create plant-based meat products for the Chinese market – making this one of the most important steps towards mainstreaming plant-based meat in China, that we have heard of in recent months.
Qishan Food [English Name: Whole Perfect Food], the first modern plant-based meat manufacturer in China, passed the strict supplier qualification review of Wal-Mart. In early March of this year, Wal-Mart and Qishan Foods started market testing in three stores in Shenzhen, a tier-2 metropolitan city, placing the products in the fresh food window, and set up
special shelves for consumers to choose.
Qishan Foods is a plant-based food manufacturer and service provider that caters to pan Asia and several international markets.
Established in 1993, Qishan Food supplies not just to China but also, export to Australia, the United Kingdom, Portugal and other places. In the past 26 years, they have invested heavily in science and technology in an effort to make China as the leader in the plant-based movement in the world. Zhou Qiyu, senior manager of Qishan Food Products Department, told
reporters:
“As early as the Tang and Song Dynasties, our vegetarian restaurants use tofu and vegetables to imitate the taste of meat… Modern technology can imitate the texture of meat after the isomerization of plant protein. Different plant proteins can imitate the taste of different meats.”
Qishan conducts over 50 new product research studies every year and hold many patents. Recently, they have set up a national-level research institute at Shenzhen University, with government support, further research on soy protein isolate and other plant-based products.
