Draper Esprit leads record £38m funding round for vegan start-up allplants

Draper Esprit has led a £38 million (€45 million) funding round for UK vegan delivery start-up allplants.

The Dublin and London-listed venture capital firm was among a number of VCs to back London-based allplants, which is hoping to capitalise on the shift away from meat consumption in favour of plant-based foods and proteins.

The raise is the largest ever second phase funding for a European plant-based food business.

Founded in 2016 by Jonathan Petrides and his brother Alex, allplants serves the rapidly growing "plant-curious" or flexitarian consumer market, which is estimated to be worth an annual £100 billion in developed markets and £10 billion in the UK alone.

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The company said it would use the investment round to increase the size of its plant-based kitchen in Walthamstow, North London, sixfold and expand its selection of meals, enabling it to service a rapidly expanding direct-to-consumer UK market. It will also build scalable capacity for rapid distribution into other channels.

Food

“In the five years that we have been cooking, we’ve seen the demand for plant-based food explode,” Jonathan Petrides, founder and chief executive of allplants, said.

“We’ve got a ton of exciting plans to bring the movement to even more people’s kitchens, and this investment will allow us to do just that,” he added.

Nicola McClafferty, partner, Draper Esprit, said: “This is an extremely exciting investment for Draper Esprit.”

“allplants is uniquely positioned at the intersection of some of the fastest growing areas in food consumption today: high quality, plant-based meals that deliver on taste, sustainability and nutrition in an incredibly convenient way for consumers,” she said.

Draper Esprit is a shareholder in a diverse portfolio of companies including Trustpilot, UiPath, TransferWise, and Graphcore