Planted Foods AG
From start-up to industry frontrunner: Switzerland’s Planted Foods AG is carving out a new category of delicious foods made from plant proteins and racking up one success after another. Their story is driven by innovation, perseverance, and a strong partner that believed in the idea from day one.
Burkhard Böndel, November 2025
Memmingen, Germany, June 17, 2025, just after 9 a.m. Summer air shimmers between the brick facades of the old brewery. Photovoltaic modules hum on the roof, groundwater cooling rushes up from the cellar, and in the hall, extruders and packaging lines whir to life. In a city that made cultural history in the Middle Ages with one of the first declarations of human rights, a new chapter in food history is being written: Planted Foods AG has just opened Europe’s most advanced production site for bio-structured proteins. The move doubles the FoodTech pioneer’s capacity to over 20 tonnes per day, creates around 50 new industrial jobs, and brings production into the heart of its most important market – Germany. The plant draws its energy from biomass district heating, photovoltaics, and groundwater cooling, offering a model for tomorrow’s food industry.
The new facility is only the latest chapter in the company’s rapid rise. In 2019, four graduates from ETH Zurich, the University of St. Gallen, and the University of Zurich founded Planted with the clear vision of reinventing the enjoyment of “meat”, but plant-based, healthy, and with no additives. Early prototypes were developed on Bühler extruders at ETH and the first scale-ups ran at the pilot plants in Uzwil. The early products won over customers and Planted moved quickly into food service and retail.After that came the typical start-up phase with successful fundraising, which in 2020 made it possible to establish the first site in Kemptthal, not far from Zurich. The company’s first in-house production line – equipped with Bühler technology – caused capacity to skyrocket from hundreds of kilos per day to 500 kilograms per hour.
Since then, expansion has followed in rapid succession. In 2022, capacity was doubled with additional extruders, followed by another funding round of CHF 70 million and now, the new factory in Memmingen. The start-up has matured into the industry’s innovation leader. “Our success is no accident,” explains Planted Co-Founder Christoph Jenny. “It’s the result of innovation, hard work, and a partnership that’s supported us from day one.”
Today, Planted products are on the shelves of more than 10,000 supermarkets across Europe and featured on the menus of over 7,000 restaurants. The company has created over 200 jobs and collected more than 30 national and international awards, including multiple wins as Swiss Start-up of the Year and a top-three ranking among Switzerland’s most innovative companies in 2024. “Many of the first-wave providers have disappeared because they failed to excite consumers,” explains Ian Roberts, CTO of Bühler. “In the food world, one rule always applies: If you don’t excite consumers, you don’t exist. Planted is among the few that have truly managed to bring convincing texture, bite, and flavor to the plate.”
Planted’s marketing plays with the contrast to animal meat and carries the claim: “Approved by meat lovers.” The food technology pioneer isn’t trying to imitate animal meat, it is creating the meat of the future. “Our ambition is to create a new category of food with plant proteins that taste fantastic,” says Jenny.
The company’s current flagship product is its planted.steak, launched in 2024. This isn’t simply a meat imitation. This muscle-like piece of “steak” is juicy, tender, and rich in umami, approved by meat lovers and top chefs. “This is a steak you eat with pleasure and forget it’s plant-based,” enthuses Planted’s brand ambassador Christian Stucki. The former Schwingerkönig (Swiss wrestling king) is a self-proclaimed meat lover who turned to plant-based meat to improve his diet and his footprint.
Planted’s taste sensation was crafted through proprietary fermentation processes from natural ingredients. Within a short time, planted.steak made it into major supermarket chains across Europe, including REWE, Kaufland, Tesco, Carrefour, Albert Heijn, and Migros.
Our vision is that plant-based proteins won’t just replace meat, they’ll surpass it – in taste, sustainability, and health.
Christoph Jenny,
Co-Founder, Planted Foods AG
With products like planted.steak, a new chapter in nutrition is beginning. Each kilogram saves up to 97 percent of CO2 emissions and 81 percent of water compared with beef. Scaled to the company’s total production so far, Planted has saved millions of liters of water, avoided emissions equivalent to tens of thousands of flights, and, most importantly, spared the lives of hundreds of thousands of animals.
The nutritional facts are compelling, too. Planted products deliver high protein, valuable fiber, less saturated fat, no cholesterol, and added vitamin B12. “Our vision is that plant-based proteins won’t just replace meat – they’ll surpass it: in taste, sustainability, and health,” says Jenny.
At Planted, innovation doesn’t stop at the plate. The company is pushing processes forward as well. Combining extrusion and fermentation makes its products unique. Extrusion creates the fibrous structure, fermentation builds flavor and muscle-like texture. At the Memmingen plant, this interplay is being realized at industrial scale for the first time. The factory also makes a strong sustainability statement: Groundwater cooling, solar panels, biomass district heating – virtually all energy comes from renewable sources. Industrial scaling thus becomes a lever for impact, not an ecological problem. “From day one, our aim was to bring great taste and sustainability together,” Jenny explains. “Our site in Memmingen proves it works at large scale.”
Was everything always smooth sailing? Not quite. Jenny recalls a particularly tough moment: “After the cancellation of an European Union funding agreement, we suddenly lost a promised sum in the millions. It was a shock – we had to improvise, raise new financing, and reassure our employees. Moments like this are part of the journey.” These experiences, Jenny says, accelerated the company’s development and further strengthened its partnership with Bühler.
For Bühler, Planted is far more than a customer. It is a showcase for collaboration, as Roberts puts it: “Building a partnership takes trust and that trust has grown over years.” Now, that foundation of trust is enabling the next step: purpose-built equipment. Together, the partners aim to develop technologies and processes that will take the production of plant-based protein foods to the next level – improving texture, increasing energy efficiency, and reducing costs. “We’re currently using processes that weren’t originally designed for our application. That’s exactly what we’re now tackling with Bühler.”
Planted is among the few that have truly managed to bring convincing texture, bite, and flavor to the plate.
Ian Roberts,
CTO at Bühler Group
Memmingen, December 2025: The new factory is fully operational and running at full speed. Even as Planted’s industrial maturity and scale have taken a decisive step forward, its ambition remains undiminished, with many more ideas in the works. As Jenny says: “We may no longer be a start-up, but we’re still only at the beginning.”
Who: Planted Foods AG
Where: Kemptthal, Switzerland
When: Founded in 2019.
What: Planted Foods AG produces meat from plant-based proteins, focusing on great taste, satisfying texture, and strong nutritional value.
Customers: The company supplies more than 10,000 supermarkets and 7,000 restaurants across Europe with its plant-based meat products.
Bühler: Planted Foods relies on Bühler’s extrusion technology at its sites in Kemptthal, Switzerland and Memmingen, Germany.
Gupfenstrasse 5
Uzwil
9240
Switzerland
