Plant-based diets are increasingly on the rise, as people adopt more vegetarian, vegan, and flexitarian diets. Brands have responded in kind, with the plant-based food and beverage sector seeing more product launches than ever before.  

While led by the big four – oat milk (with a 30% market share), almond milk, coconut milk and soya milk – the non-dairy milk sector has rapidly growth into a category hub of innovation. From rice milk to hemp milk to cashew milk, plant-based milk alternatives, or alt-milks, are now made with nuts, grains, legumes; with endless further variables in plant combination, flavoured, barista, activated, sweetened and unsweetened varieties. 

This is a great example of how brands and innovation create dynamic new categories. Alpro were essential as they delivered the scale to move from niche to mainstream; Oatly’s marketing engagement and explosive growth was also key and early successes like Rude Health built authenticity. The platform is now allowing a host of brands like Rebel Kitchen, Minor Figures, Nooj and Bright Barley to develop new products while creating brands with strong personalities, through which to convey their authentic message of sustainability and change. Two distinctively different new British brands launched over lockdown: 

  • Nooj has created a new product and concept: a paste as a basis for a nut milk but also with endless other culinary possibilities. The nut milk concentrate provides a higher nut : water ratio in comparison to other products with less packaging. 
  • Bright Barley launched the first barley-based milk last year during lock down and has since been awarded the World Beverage Innovation Award 2020. 

As well as securing listings in major grocery chains, brands have also successfully begun to partner with the hospitality sector including restaurants and café chains.  

According to McKinsey, about 35 percent of consumers in the United Kingdom, the United States and Germany are drinking plant-based milk at least some of the time and half of them only entered the category in the last year. Other milk alternatives (milk substitutes that are not dairy-based or made from soya) is the fastest-growing category in the dairy products and alternatives industry, an increase of 16% in 2020-2021. 

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