An Exclusive Look Inside China’s “New Proteins” Sector
As reported in this morning’s edition of The Straits Times, a team of GFI APAC staffers recently traveled across China to see with our own eyes what the country’s major biomanufacturing push means for Singapore and the future of Asia’s protein supply.
What we saw only further solidified our confidence that China will play a decisive role in the long-term success of the future-food sector…
What We Saw
On the outskirts of an unassuming industrial park near Yichang, in Hubei Province, sits a gargantuan symbol of China’s future-food ambitions. 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, a small crew of control-room employees quietly watch as legions of robotic arms harvest nutrient-dense proteins from giant bioreactors, before packaging them for global export.
The facility, which opened its doors in November, is the first of its kind for Angel Yeast—a multinational company that produces more than half of all yeast used in Chinese buns and breads. Taking its cues from national policymakers—who have made protein diversification a top strategic priority—the public company recently expanded its product offerings to include what it calls “new proteins” (more commonly known as alternative proteins). Produced through biomass fermentation in a matter of hours—rather than the weeks, months, or years required for animal equivalents—their proteins cost half as much as whey and have a 95 percent lower carbon footprint than their animal-sourced counterparts. The harvested proteins can be used in everything from sports nutrition beverages and protein-fortified snacks to plant-based meats.
Angel’s new complex is the size of 50 football fields, capable of producing more than 11,000 tonnes of yeast-based protein every year—and yet the company is still struggling to keep up with rising customer demand. At the time of our visit, Angel was about to break ground on a second factory behind the first one, which will increase their annual capacity to more than 30,000 tonnes.
In other words, this Chinese factory is an early manifestation of Singapore’s realised vision for a more sustainable, resilient, and nutritious food system in Asia.
From Singapore to China to the World
Over the past decade, the Lion City has played an integral role in exploring the frontiers of novel-food production. As a living laboratory for food security solutions, Singapore is where many cutting-edge protein innovations are pioneered, refined, and rolled out to consumers—but the country needs international partners to rapidly ramp up commercialisation and manufacturing to a global scale. Facilitating stronger scientific and industry connections between Singapore, China, and other Asian innovation hubs can create a strategic alliance greater than the sum of its parts.
The groundwork for this transcontinental alliance has been taking shape over the past few years. In 2024, top Chinese researchers joined forces with their Singaporean counterparts and scientists from the Good Food Institute APAC to co-host a historic summit aimed at identifying the most urgent bottlenecks to achieving taste and price parity between animal-based and animal-free foods. A few months later, Beijing opened its first government-funded innovation centre focused exclusively on alternative proteins.
Today, the walls of that glistening new facility are emblazoned with uplifting quotes from President Xi Jinping, who has directed his countrymen to “give rise to new industries, new models, and new drivers of growth” through technological innovation. Depicted alongside Xi’s edicts is a timeline of industry milestones, including the Singapore Food Agency’s precedent-setting approval of cultivated meat in December 2020.
In 2025, China and Singapore also joined the Republic of Korea and Saudi Arabia to form a new United Nations working group designed to streamline international safety review processes for cultivated meat. China’s own national approval framework could come as soon as late 2026, according to local cultivated meat CEOs—potentially creaking open the door to a long-awaited market opportunity of epic proportions.
A Thriving World, Fed Sustainably
Economics are one driving force behind China’s interest in “new proteins.” Singapore-based researchers have concluded that Asia’s carbon emissions goal cannot be met without diversifying the regional protein supply, and China is betting that through strategic investments—including hundreds of millions of dollars allocated for “biomanufacturing” by its State Development & Investment Corporation—it can successfully position itself as the primary sustainable-protein supplier to the world.
But there are geopolitical benefits, too. As consumers’ purchasing power and per-capita meat consumption have risen, Chinese meat producers have resorted to importing hundreds of millions of tonnes of soybeans and corn to fulfil their domestic animal-feed needs. This is due in large part to the extreme inefficiency of cycling food through farmed animals. As the new nonfiction book MEAT by GFI founder Bruce Friedrich notes, even producing chicken—the most efficient animal protein—requires feeding nine calories of feed to a bird to get only one calorie back as meat. That’s like serving nine bowls of rice and throwing eight of them in the trash every time we sit down to eat.
China’s leaders are understandably eager to unshackle themselves from this import dependence and liberate vast quantities of raw materials for human food production. By mastering the art of making protein from plants, microorganisms, and cultivated animal cells, China can produce a whole lot more of it and bolster national self-sufficiency.
The Big Event
That message will be front and centre in early March as China’s all-important “Two Sessions” annual summit kicks off in Beijing, where a new national five-year agriculture plan will be released. In the weeks leading up to the conference, provincial and city leaders have been proactively pushing out their own ambitious plans in support of the national mission. Shanghai, for instance, announced a new 20-point action plan to accelerate novel food development over the next five years by leveraging synthetic biology, artificial intelligence, and science-based communication strategies.
This sudden surge of domestic and international collaboration by Asia’s largest economy is great news for Singapore, a global launchpad for future-food startups that has invested up to 24 times as much public funding into protein innovation as other top innovation hubs like the US, measured as a percentage of its GDP. As an epicentre of climate financing, Singapore is similarly well-positioned to help this emerging industry thrive by bringing key public-sector stakeholders, private investors, and philanthropic players to the table. “In something like the alternative protein sector … the solutions are there,” Singapore’s National Climate Change Secretariat director Mr. Joel Tee told audiences at the COP30 Singapore Pavilion in Brazil. “Unlocking that financing stack, that capital stack, is the big innovation that we should be looking at.”
Years-long efforts aimed at upskilling Singaporeans for careers in protein innovation may also prove prescient. The city-state currently boasts six modules at its universities and polytechnics solely dedicated to alternative proteins—up from just two in 2022—which are helping to build the world-class foodtech workforce Asia will need.
“China and Singapore are different in almost every way, and yet we share a common mission when it comes to food: make more with less,” says Prof. William Chen, director of the Singapore Agri-Food Innovation Lab. “As our planet warms, every country will need more efficient ways to make meat, and Asian innovation hubs are once again positioning themselves to sell the world what it needs.”
Onwards,
Ryan Huling
Senior Writer | GFI APAC
Haven’t subscribed yet? Join our mailing list below to be the first to hear about updates like this!