Edmonton’s Nabati Foods Hopes To Bring Its Vegan ‘Eggz’ To Stores Around The World | The Canadian News

You can stir them, make French toast with them, or fold them into an omelet.

You can even bake with Nabati Plant Eggz, as the vegan liquid “egg” product behaves similarly to conventional eggs in muffin, cookie and cake batter.

And when it comes to taste, Nabati Foods CEO Ahmad Yehya says the product, made from pea and lupine protein, which is part of the legume family, is the closest thing to the real thing.

“It is simulating an egg. This is what you can do. I’m not God, he’s not on that level, ”Yehya said. “But we can get as close as possible and as we continue to develop our product, it will only get better.”

Almost 10 years after California-based Beyond Meat launched its line of vegan meat substitutes and revolutionized the food industry, there is no shortage of veggie burgers, plant-based ground “meat,” and simulated chicken fingers in the shops. grocery store shelves.

Recently, there have even been suggestions that the market is oversaturated. Maple Leaf Foods CEO Michael McCain said earlier this month that his company has seen a marked decline in sales of plant-based meat substitutes, such as Maple Leaf’s Lightlife brand.

Still, with issues like climate change and animal welfare increasingly on the minds of consumers, many companies believe that the seedling-based food movement has plenty of room to grow. And for some, the perfect plant-based “egg,” a difficult product to develop but one that, if done right, could revolutionize not just breakfast, but a broad category of baked goods, sandwiches and more, is the Holy Grail.

“We’ve been working on this for two years,” said Yehya, whose family business is based in Edmonton and launched Plant Eggz in late August, joining its existing line of vegan cheesecakes, cheese substitutes and meat.

“It is a great piece of the puzzle and it is very innovative. We are the first Canadian company to do so. “

According to the market research company Expert Market Research, the global market for vegan egg substitutes could grow at a rate of 5.6% annually between 2021 and 2026, reaching a value of 1.48 billion dollars.

And so far, there are not many players. So far, San Francisco-based food tech startup Eat Just dominates the global liquid vegan egg market with Just Egg, which launched in 2018 and is made with mung beans. Just Egg arrived in Canada earlier this year and is available at several supermarket chains, including Walmart and Loblaws.

British food technology company Crackd has also developed a pea protein-based liquid egg product, which is available at M&S ​​stores in that country.

In an email, Elissa Zaks, a spokesperson for Egg Farmers of Canada, acknowledged that there is a demand in the market for plant-based alternatives. However, he said that plant-based products “are not eggs” and do not provide the same amount of protein, iron and vitamins as chicken eggs.

“Consumers should know that nutritionally, these alternative plant-based products do not offer the same value,” Zaks said.

Nabati Foods’ Plant Eggz product is now available at Whole Foods in BC and Ontario, and at Sobeys in Quebec. The company went public on the Canada Stock Exchange earlier this year and built a new food manufacturing plant in Edmonton that opened in the spring.

Yehya says the next goal is to expand into global markets. Nabati has already reached an agreement with a European distributor and some of its products can be found on the shelves of Hong Kong stores.

As a major producer of plant protein staples like peas, soybeans, hemp and chickpeas, Canada has the potential to be a world leader in the plant-based food space, said Tyler McCann, managing director of the Canadian Institute for Food Policy.

That will open up opportunities not only for food technology companies like Nabati, but also for farmers and processors, McCann said.

“We need to think in the context of serving not just Canadian consumers, but consumers around the world,” McCann said. “We need to find ways to grow companies that can be globally competitive.”

But to do that, Canada needs to significantly develop its processing capacity, said Bill Gruell, president and CEO of Protein Industries Canada, a nonprofit organization whose goal is to position Canada as a global source of high-quality plants. protein and vegetable based products.

“We produce about 5 million metric tons of peas in Canada annually and we process about 500,000 metric tons of peas,” Gruell said. “What we want to do in Western Canada is build the processing capacity here at home, so that we can help organizations like Nabati buy the ingredients, the protein they need for the products they are making here.”

So far, Nabati Foods has shipped the raw peas it uses in its products to China for processing, Yehya said. But as new processors come online, Yehya said Nabati is looking to switch to local national suppliers.

“I see the grasslands as a center for plant-based food,” Yehya said. “If you are a plant-based manufacturer, the next thing will be to be grassland-based and close to your supply chain.”