'Not good enough': Cranswick's attempts to create plant-based meat alternatives 'haven't hit the mark', says chairman
Attempts by Yorkshire food supply giant Cranswick to create plant-based versions of meat products “haven’t hit the mark”, according to the firm’s chairman.
The East Yorkshire firm, which is valued at around £3bn and supplies the nation’s major supermarkets, is largely focused on pork and chicken products but also provides foods like houmous, olives and cheese.
Tim Smith, chairman of the firm, was asked by The Yorkshire Post about potential further additions of vegetarian products to the company’s range.
He said efforts to develop plant-based meat substitutes have been made in light of growing demand but the company is yet to come up with satisfactory options despite being proud of its separate Mediterranean range which includes multiple vegetarian products.
"The general thrust of our strategy would be that we are a food business, first and foremost,” he said. We are generally taking the consumer trend or in some cases leading that.
“As there's been a move towards protein from other sources, or vegetarian or vegan foods, the tests that we would apply, and certainly this is true at the board level, would be for us to get interested in it has to be good food. It has to be food that everybody agrees is high quality, is good value, sustainably produced, all the usual metrics.
"What falls into that is what we call the mezze plate, where you've got houmous and olives, and those kind of products, which you could say follow the Mediterranean diet. That's an obvious place for Cranswick to be with its food proposition.
"We've looked at lots of different options for creating plant-based versions of meat products, and none of those have hit the mark.
"None of those have been good enough. If we were branded, we would not be selling those products to consumers and saying ‘here's an equally good version of what we do on bacon or sausage or whatever’. We just haven't found that product.”
When asked how it is determined whether something is good enough, Mr Smith said: “The product development teams will do their level best and our retail customers are able to judge fairly quickly if the food is the right product to have on the shelf.
"There’s a relative test too of ‘it is supposed to be a vegan or vegetarian version of this product’, is it good enough? The absolute measure is, ‘Would this pass muster as a food product we’d be happy to serve to our families?’”
Mr Smith said he would “never say never” on the development of such products in future and highlighted previous Cranswick acquisitions of Mediterranean food companies like Ramona’s Kitchen which create products like houmous and falafel.
"There will be a demand that somebody might just find a way of meeting, which we haven't thought of either in technology, but what's really turned the tide the opposite direction is the fact that if you produce products like that, they tend to be full of chemicals and additives,” he said.
"The golden rule is, is it good enough as a food product to stand alone.
"If you look at Ramona's, the olive business that we’ve got and those kind of Mediterranean foods that we sell, then those have all passed that test and we've invested.”
It comes as Cranswick publishes new research saying the company supports almost 50,000 jobs across the UK, providing a £3.3bn economic boost. It directly employs more than 9,000 people in Yorkshire.