After recently unveiling its new plant-based range called MEAT ZERO, Thai pork and poultry giant Charoen Pokphand Foods PLC (CP Foods) has joined forces with ProVeg Asia to incubate future foodtech startups in South East Asia. The plant-based focused ASEAN Food Innovation Challenge 2021 saw 17 foodtech innovators compete, with two CP Foods mentored projects winning the first and second prizes.
CP Foods – Thailand’s largest agro-industrial food business – has been developing plant-based products for over two years and has the desire and means to make its brands the biggest in Asia. Launched in collaboration with ProVeg Asia, The ASEAN Food Innovation Challenge 2021 was an international competition to encourage young researchers to produce alternative healthy food in response to future food trends and received a total of 125 applications from 54 universities in 13 countries.
Winning team Food Tech Chula from Thailand presented The Marble Booster, a Wagyu-style marbled-meat analog infused with immune-boosters, while runner-up TempMie from Indonesia developed instant Japanese-Indonesian noodles with tempeh as its raw material. Both teams were coached and mentored by CP Foods.
As well as its continued work in Asia, leading international food awareness organization ProVeg has recently opened the application process for this summer’s Incubator accelerator program, as well as launching the ProVeg Africa Accelerator – the first accelerator project for the plant-based movement across the African continent.
