Temasek-backed plant-based 'chicken' maker raises US$100m Series A funds for US expansion

NEXT Gen Foods, a Singapore-based maker of plant-based "chicken", has raised US$100 million from Alpha JWC, government-owned EDBI, UK-based MPL Ventures and others, to break into the key market of North America.

Existing investors who doubled down in the Series A round include Temasek (through its newly established Asia Sustainable Food Platform), GGV Capital, Kuok family-linked K3 Ventures and Bits x Bites.

Next Gen's flagship product is TiNDLE, a plant-based food meant to have the taste, texture and mouthfeel of chicken. The startup, founded in 2020, raised US$30 million in seed funding last year to develop and market the product.

According to the company's website, its key ingredient is a blend of plant-based fats and flavour that has been named Lipi, which makes TiNDLE smell, taste and cook like chicken.

The product was launched 10 months ago. It is being supplied to around 150 restaurants in Asia, including Singapore, Hong Kong, Macau and Malaysia, through distributor Classic Fine Foods. Singapore is currently the company's largest market by sales, and the product is also available in Amsterdam and Dubai.

The real crown jewel, though, is the United States where rivals Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat have already started selling their chicken substitutes. Next Gen has launched in the world's largest plant-based market through working with restaurants, and plans to increase distribution of TiNDLE to all 50 states.

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It struck up a deal with redistributor Dot Foods, which supplies to thousands of distributors in America.

Next Gen is working with top chefs to introduce its product to the market - a tactic that has been employed by peers such as Impossible Foods.

"We want people to have that amazing first taste experience. So we will be going right through restaurants first and once we build that out and the brand is strong and ready, then we will look at exploring into more retail chains or retail supermarkets as well," chief operating officer Alex Ward said.

Ward declined to reveal any sales growth figures, but said the company has positive gross margins.

Next Gen's manufacturing is done in the Netherlands, but it is in discussions with manufacturing partners in Asia and the US to bring the product as close to the end-consumer as possible. With its current setup, there is enough capacity for the next 18 months, Ward said.

The company's new research and development (R&D) hub will open in Singapore at the end of this year. The R&D centre was developed in partnership with the Food Tech Innovation Centre, established by Temasek's Asia Sustainable Foods Platform.

"We're going to spend the first year or 2 to develop (TiNDLE) further and have new applications of that existing technology," Ward said. The company will then move to developing new technology such as looking into different sources of ingredients. Next Gen uses soya but that could change in the future.

"We will be doing a lot of research into new combinations of protein sources and new interactions between ingredients, and we're hiring a team of scientists in Singapore to do that," Ward added.

Next Gen's founders had put in US$2.2 million to start the company. Prior to founding Next Gen, Timo Recker was the founder and chief executive of German plant-based meat company LikeMeat, and Andre Menezes was the general manager of Country Foods Singapore.

Singapore F&B company Yeo Hiap Seng is also an investor in Next Gen. Interest in alternative protein has grown by leaps and bounds amid a climate crisis and shifting consumer behaviour.

In November 2020, Singapore regulators gave the green light for San Francisco-based Eat Just to sell its lab-grown chicken in the city-state. Eat Just in end-2020 said Singapore will be its Asia headquarters and potentially its global manufacturing hub.

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