Beyond Meat to build new innovation centre in US

US-based food company Beyond Meat is planning to build a new 26,000ft² research and development centre at its headquarters in El Segundo, California.

The new centre is said to be seven times larger than Beyond Meat’s existing facilities and will also serve as the new home for the company’s Manhattan Beach Project, which is an initiative to develop meat products from the plant.

Beyond Meat intends to recruit more than 100 employees for its new facility.

Beyond Meat founder and CEO Ethan Brown said: “The expansion of the Manhattan Beach Project here in Los Angeles reflects our belief that building meat from plants is an opportunity of global importance, one that is deserving of investment levels consistent with what you’d find in alternative energy or health sciences, sectors with which we certainly share common goals.

“We are seeing a record number of consumers expressing interest in a broader set of protein choices.

“To these consumers, it is our brand promise to enable them to eat what they love, from burgers to sausage, while feeling great about related health and environmental implications.

“The new centre is designed to help us fulfil that promise to the best of our abilities.”

According to the company, the new centre will be used to accelerate its experiments for building plant-based meat.

Beyond Meat Research and Development lead Dariush Ajami said: “We are leaving no stone unturned in our efforts to perfectly build meat directly from plant materials, using only natural ingredients and without genetic modification.

“The breadth of processes and technologies we are bringing in-house supports the company’s focus on rapid innovation, in some cases reducing timelines by half.”

Beyond Meat’s new R&D footprint will include state-of-the-art texture and imaging labs that will accelerate development of products that are indistinguishable from meat.