ONE of the Asia-Pacific region’s largest manufacturers of plant-based “fake meats” is closing, saying investors have lost faith in the business.

New Zealand-based Sunfed produced plant-based proteins under labels such as Bull Free Beef, Chicken Free Chicken and Boar Free Bacon, which had sold in Australia through Woolworths and Coles supermarkets.

It was backed by Australian venture capital behemoth Blackbird, which invested A$4.5m in 2018, and other venture capital investors which collectively invested a similar amount in the same year.

However, in a video posted to the company’s Facebook page earlier this week (below), Sunfed founder and chief executive Shama Sukul Lee announced she was closing the company, saying investors had written Sunfed off.

It followed a move by Blackbird Ventures to slash Sunfed’s valuation to zero.

She said venture capital investors were chasing faster valuation growth than the company could deliver.

“Essentially a lot of VC investors had jumped into the plant-based gold rush thinking they could get fast valuation returns similar to what they are used to in the virtual world,” she said.

“But manufacturing and FMCG are in the physical world with a lot more complexity and moving parts and is generally a longer term play as you have to build real things.“

She said the plant-based bubble has burst and the category has been undergoing a reality check, “and rightly so.”

“Fuelled by easy VC money the category became saturated with junk food masked as healthy and people now see through that.”

She said that with the unfavourable market conditions, she had to make the responsible decision of shutting the company down in a solvent, orderly fashion.