Impossible Foods is doubling its research budget, seeking improvements to its Impossible Burger introduced in 2016 and to plant-based milk.
It plans to use $700 million in raised from investors this year.
Impossible Foods has five researchers working on a milk substitute, already working for two years to develop a product can be cooked, heated, even used to produce cheese.
Chief executive officer Pat Brown bills Impossible Foods as a saviour of the environment by reducing the cow population that emits greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.
“There are 1.7 billion cows on the planet, a significant fraction used in dairy production. Cows are so incredibly inefficient,” he said during a recent news conference.
The plant-based milk category has seen consistent double-digit increases in sales even as cow’s milk consumption has declined, according to a Nielsen study in June 2018.
But, Brown said: “The plant-based milks out there are inadequate. [We want] to make something that for a dairy milk lover is better than anything that comes from a cow.”
Among plant-based milk competitors on the market are ones made from oats, rice and nuts.
Alan Bjerga, senior vice president of communications for the National Milk Producers Federation, said that Impossible’s attempted incursion is more likely to affect those other plant-based producers.
