Earlier this year, the world was rocked by a Liberation Day announcement made by United States President Donald Trump regarding ‘reciprocal tariffs’ to be implemented on all of the country’s trade partners starting at a minimum of 10%.
Although President Trump has already announced a 90-day pause on his reciprocal tariffs over 10% to all markets except China, which continues to have some 145% tariffs placed on its exports to the US, and is maintaining 125% tariffs on all US imports, uncertainty remains rife in many markets.
This is no different for the food and beverage industry, given the prevalence of US brands such as Kraft Heinz, Mondelez, Kellogg and more all over the world.
Protein supply chains in Asia have also felt the impacts of this uncertainty, having had to add this concern to an ever-lengthening list of challenges from sustainability to rising logistics costs over the past few years.
“The US tariffs will have an impact on all markets, even if the impact is supposedly ‘minimal’ such as in Singapore which has been hit with the ‘lowest’ tariff rate of 10%,” Nurasa CEO Xiuling Guo told FoodNavigator-Asia.
“The United States has traditionally been strong in the meat industry, but with this tariffs situation being so uncertain as well as food price inflation increasing all around the world, what we know is that consumers are going to tighten their purse strings in many aspects, including when it comes to making protein purchases.
“The traditional protein industry is particularly susceptible to both these economic factors as well as other issues like diseases, as we have seen many examples of over the years, and this is actually a situation where alternative proteins such as plant-based could really have an advantage.
“Plant-based proteins are agile and innovative, and important are far less influenced by these external factors than traditional protein as there is no livestock involved nor any necessity to be limited by cold chain logistics.
“What this in turn means is that there is a lot more room to create new options for consumers as well as to stabilize margins for businesses, which all in all can help to manage the risks of pricing instabilities and consumer accessibility to protein.
“We are not saying that alternative proteins are not affected at all by these uncertainties – there is still an impact, but definitely far less than the impact on traditional meat and in this way it is well-positioned to bring more certainty to the market.”
This comes alongside Nurasa’s collaboration with Singapore-based Quality Meat to launch its new Q Protein-enhanced hybrid meat product under the Nurasa NuFood Concept Studio developed to fast-trace the commercialisation of better-for-you foods.
The hybrid protein claims to offer improved nutrition, lowered cholesterol and higher fibre content while maintaining the flavour and experience of traditional meat.
Agility is key
Guo emphasised that protein production today needs to focus on agility in order to keep up with current external pressures and challenges, and that a hybrid of plant-based and traditional protein is the most sensible way forward at present to meet all demands placed on the system.
“What we’re looking at now is essentially Protein Plus – protein which is not just protein for nutrition, but can also be healthy, aid the food supply chain, and now can also help with price risk management,” she said.
“Inherent in all of this is the agility of the protein, technology or system to change according to the dynamic environment that the food industry is operating in, as the businesses also need to adapt quickly.
“At the end of the day, what consumers look for the most in their food is the nutrition that it contains such as the protein content it can give them, and not at whether this food is a meat or not, and there are technologies and platforms that can work to provide this, as long as they have the agility to do so.”