PLANT BASED DAIRY ALTERNATIVES 2021
Cheese alternatives
that taste good
Willicroft has big ambitions
Willicroft, Dutch manufacturer
of cheese alternatives,
has big growth
ambitions. Having just started selling
its products in grocery stores in
October 2020, sales are set to increase
six-fold in 2021. IDM asked
with company boss Brad Vanstone
about the background.
Willicroft traces its origins to a
dairy farm in Devon, UK, set up by
Vanstone‘s grandfather in the 1950s.
After Vanstone decided to adopt
a vegan lifestyle in 2016, he soon
found that there were hardly any replacement
products on the market
that even came close to cheese. So
the decision to build a business with
plant-based cheese alternatives was
quite obvious. "The market for cheese
alternatives is currently hardly occupied.
This is a gap in the market that
we entered in 2018. At first we did
the manufacturing in-house, but now
our products are made in a factory
near Rotterdam," explains Vanstone.
Vanstone found its breakthrough
to larger dimensions last autumn
with a listing in Waitrose markets in
the UK as well as Belgium and the
Netherlands. The distribution partner
Vandersterre was able to open
some doors here. In 2021, expansion
into Scandinavia, Switzerland
and Germany is on the agenda. Accordingly,
turnover is expected to
increase from €500,000 in 2020 to
€3 million in 2021.
Brad Vanstone is all about completely
regenerative food production
Change in raw material
Willicroft currently offers eight plant
"cheeses" for the food retail trade and
12 items for the food service sector.
Bestsellers in the range are Fondue
and Parmesan and Feta alternatives.
With the exception of "Feta", they are
Willicroft also produces spreads like this cream cheese substitute
20 · January/February 2021 ¦ international-dairy.com
/international-dairy.com
