Tesco commits to 300% sales increase in meat alternatives

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Tesco has announced it will become the first UK retailer to set a sales target for plant-based meat alternatives as it steps up its work with its partner, WWF to halve the environmental impact of food production.

Posted on Nov 06 ,07:33

The retailer has committed to a 300% increase in its sales of meat alternatives by 2025*, alongside a wider set of sustainability measures which it has developed with WWF. Taken together, the measures included in the partnership’s Sustainable Basket Metric will aim to halve the environmental impact of the average UK shopping basket.

Tesco has set out a range of measures to help it reach its ambitious sales target:

• Availability: Introduce and grow plant-based meat alternatives across all its stores, with products across 20 different categories including ready meals, breaded meat alternatives, plant-based sausages, burgers, quiches, pies, party food.
• Affordability: continue to invest in value so that affordability is not a barrier to buying plant-based meat alternatives.
• Innovation: work with suppliers to bring new innovations to customers.
• Visibility: provide a meat alternative where a meat version is featured, for example Richmond sausages and Richmond plant-based sausages to feature together.

In another industry first, Tesco has committed to publishing the sales of plant-based proteins as a percentage of overall protein sales every year to track its progress. Tesco became the first UK retailer to publish its food waste data in 2013, and it hopes this new level of transparency on protein sales will help encourage the rest of the food industry to make similar commitments.

Food production, specifically meat and dairy production, has a significant impact on precious habitats like the Amazon and Cerrado regions of Brazil and is acknowledged as a major contributor to climate change.

The two organisations are now calling on other food businesses to increase their transparency around sustainability measures and consider the Sustainable Basket Metric as a framework and way of monitoring progress towards making the food system more sustainable.

*2025 target taken from a 2018 baseline figure.

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