Instant noodles giant Monde Nissin says sales in its Quorn Foods meat alternatives business fell 5.8% on a constant currency basis in the first quarter of 2025, slightly outperforming the alt meat category in the UK, its core market, which was down 8.9% in Q1.
Reported net sales in the division—comprising the Quorn and Cauldron brands—fell 3.8% to PHP 3.29 billion ($59.2 million).
“The UK market remains depressed and both our Cauldron brand and our foodservice business had a challenging quarter,” said Monde Nissin CEO Henry Soesanto in the earnings call.
However, the bottom line [at Quorn Foods] improved through lower input costs, supply chain restructuring, and lower inventory, while double-digit growth in savory snacking products (bites, picnic eggs, sausage rolls, cocktail sausages) helped boost its market share, he said.
“Quorn market leadership strengthened with the biggest share gain of any brand through wins in both chilled and frozen… Profit performance was also strong with the effect of the transformation program helping to drive gross margin expansion, plus a positive EBITDA, near breakeven core EBIT, and also the decrease in core net loss after tax of PHP 58 million ($1 million) compared to PHP 216 million ($3.9 million) in Q1 2024.”
Quorn-KFC partnership
Despite a weak overall performance in foodservice, Quorn Foods is “building stronger and stronger working relationships” with fast food chain KFC, said CEO David Flochel, who took the helm last year. “We’re trialing and expanding our menus in France right now with KFC.”
Quorn Foods is also working with “a number of big customers, big caterers, to help them blend our mycoprotein in their meat products to improve the health profile and environmental footprint of those products,” he added.
“We are working to get the foodservice channel and business back to flat by the end of the year.”
Quorn US account for 5% of Quorn Foods’ sales
While Quorn was introduced to the US in 2002, the US market only accounts for 5% of total sales (vs around 9.4% in 2020), said Flochel. “We are importing all of our food from the UK. Most of it is finished goods and some semi-finished products as well.
“From April this year, we face an additional tariff of 10% on those imports; but even with those new tariffs, our US business makes a small positive financial contribution.
“However, the market conditions in the US remain tough as we know, and we are reviewing the outlook and the strategy for our US business and transform to win together. And we’ll come back definitely later in the year with the strategy for the US going forward.”
‘Really difficult times’ for Cauldron
Cauldron, which specializes in falafel, tofu, and sausages, has been “battling specialist competitors in all three of those segments,” said Quorn Foods CFO Nick Cooper.
“We are doing some work which hasn’t yet fed through into the results but is coming in terms of innovation in the tofu space and in terms of falafel. We’re also looking at the competitiveness of our sausage offering and how we communicate with consumers about the Cauldron brand.”
Flochel added: “Cauldron has had some difficult times. We are now protecting the brand with a focus on snacking… and we have really strong plans for next year to reignite the brand.”
Controlled fermentation process
High in protein and fiber and low in saturated fat and calories, Quorn mycoprotein is an edible filamentous fungus called Fusarium Venenatum first discovered growing in soil in Buckinghamshire in the UK in the late 1960s and grown at a commercial scale using a controlled fermentation process in large steel tanks.
Launched in the UK in 1985, Quorn was introduced to the US in 2002. Its parent company Marlow Foods was acquired by Monde Nissin—one of the leading consumer packaged foods companies in the Philippines— in late 2015 for £550 million ($695 million). Cauldron Foods, a UK-based brand founded in the early 1980s, was acquired as part of the same deal.
According to Monde Nissin’s 2024 annual report, the UK accounted for 78.6% of sales in its meat alternatives business in full-year 2024, with 5.6% coming from the US and the remainder from the Republic of Ireland, mainland Europe, Southeast Asia, and Australasia.
Circana data suggests Quorn and Cauldron were the #1 and #4 brands in the UK market with a 27.2% and 4.4% share of the grocery retail market by value in 2024.
