“No companies in the food industry can afford not assessing the potential impact of alternative proteins.”

At Bright Green Partners, we hear the above feedback from all types of stakeholders, and what we also see is that food companies are increasingly interested in using M&A as part of their alt protein growth strategy.

However, the challenge they often face is that acquiring alternative protein companies when they are in a "proven" stage is becoming less and less feasible: the valuation of late-stage startups in the field are stratospheric.

An alternative however is acquiring and/or investing in startups and tech in their early stages.

• In those stages ticket sizes are lower
• However, a more robust scientific and technical validation is required

Early stage due-diligence however is most often not the core competence of traditional food companies, especially when it comes to entering fields like fermentation and cell agriculture. And this is reason why we, at Bright Green Partners, put some much focus on supporting our clients with target scouting and due diligence.

Géza Molnár

Managing Partner of Bright Green Partners