How are things going at Rival Foods?
In 2021 Rival Foods won EP&C's pitch competition with their innovative meat substitute that has a real meat texture. How are things going at Rival Foods? CEO and founder Birgit Dekkers brings us up to speed.
Producing meat substitutes in a former meat factory
"At the time of the pitch competition we were still working from an R&D site. We were scaling up machines and developing products. A year ago we rented a former meat factory and converted it. Since July 2024 we have been producing our own products."
And they have been doing so successfully. Rival Foods' products are now on the shelves in the UK and are being served in restaurants, canteens and hospitals in the Netherlands. The latter because the products are low in salt and high in protein making them very suitable for patients. It is also a sustainable solution, Birgit explains: "Hospitals are basically very large hotels where huge amounts of food are consumed. Our products help them achieve their sustainability objectives in a simple way."
Large-scale production is the next goal
What is Rival Foods' ambition for the future? "We want to move to a co-manufacturing model, which will enable us to collaborate smartly with other companies that already have production facilities. It is much more cost-effective to use existing infrastructure and produce locally. For example in a factory that already produces burgers and sausages. This way our products can be integrated into a single-stream logistics chain. This cuts costs and makes it possible for our products to compete with meat products. It would also be great if we could establish a strong position in Europe as this will enable us to take our first steps towards America and Asia."
Financial milestone
The efforts of Birgit and her - now twenty in number - colleagues have recently led to an important milestone. Rival Foods raised €10 million in a financing round by pension investor APG on behalf of ABP. "This investment is an important milestone in our mission to make high-quality plant-based meat mainstream," says Birgit. "We are not called Rival Foods for nothing. We are competing with meat."
With the funding, the company wants to double its production capacity in Geldrop and further optimise its production costs to become competitive with animal meat.
Patents as a foundation
Patent Attorney Thomas Remmerswaal, who works with Rival Foods at EP&C, is watching the company's development with interest. "It's great to see Rival Foods mature. They started with a prototype system that was an upgrade of the system Birgit worked on at Wageningen University," Thomas explains. "They gradually discovered that other systems might be more productive. In addition, Rival Foods has a patent for making beautifully shaped products with an innovative portioning machine. So their patent portfolio is also growing, which is a good thing. Patents are not only intended to protect your own technology, but also to secure a unique position and obtain financing."
