US company Eat Just wanted to replace chicken eggs around the world with artificial ones sold in liquid form, writes the South China Morning Post.
Eat Just was founded in 2011 and is based in San Francisco, California. The company managed to attract funding from several large funds, including Singapore’s Temasek, as well as from the well-known Hong Kong venture capitalist Li Kashin. Their investments have allowed Eat Just to become a “unicorn” – the so-called companies whose market value exceeds a billion dollars.
In October, Eat Just announced that it was going to raise $ 200 million in the capital market by selling part of its shares. If the deal goes through, the company’s capitalization will reach two billion dollars. The funds will also be used to build a $ 120 million artificial protein plant in one of the Asian countries.
An artificial egg substitute sold in liquid form under the Just Egg brand is the company’s most acclaimed product. According to co-founder and head of Eat Just Josh Tetrick, management hopes that in the near future, plant-based eggs will become popular not only with vegetarians, but also with all health conscious people.
Tetrik sees the greatest potential in the Asian market, since residents of countries from this part of the world are more actively interested in healthy eating than others. At the moment, Asian countries account for about 64 percent of the world market for chicken eggs, which last year was estimated at $ 200.8 billion. Eat Just also produces a mayonnaise substitute sold in all major US retail chains.
In the homeland of Eat Just, there is also an increase in demand for substitutes for traditional food of plant origin. The local market grew 11 percent last year to $ 5 billion, thanks in large part to artificial meat producers Beyond Meat and Food Impossible.