Plant-protein processing is slowly but surely making its way to Alberta with the recent launch of Lovingly Made Ingredients in Calgary.

The ingredient manufacturing arm of the British company Meatless Farm began production in its 33,000-square-foot facility in March. And so far, Alberta is proving to be the right location for the rapidly growing startup.

“We were looking for the best place to position ourselves that would have the biggest positive impact on our end consumers at the Meatless Farm, and we ultimately settled on Calgary,” said Chris Shields, vice-president of manufacturing for Lovingly Made Ingredients.

“There’s three million metric tons of yellow peas within not too big a distance of us, so between supply, logistics, market access, and proximity to research, we’re just really well positioned for a multitude of reasons.”

The Lovingly Made Ingredients division was created in 2020 as a way to produce ingredients of sufficient quality and quantity for the Meatless Farm, a European leader in the faux meat (a.k.a. meat analogue) sector. It produces patties, “ground,” and sausages primarily from pea proteins.

“We’ve gone from a startup company two years ago with 200 or 300 per cent growth each year,” said Shields. “For a lot of suppliers, they just couldn’t keep pace as we started to expand — and there’s no sign of that slowing down.

“So with the struggle trying to secure our own material, we decided to take the plunge and do it ourselves. We saw some gaps that we could fill that would improve our product, and it’s certainly sped up our innovation massively in doing so.”

Using yellow pea protein processed in Saskatchewan, Lovingly Made creates a textured — “almost spongy” — product that can be used in everything from gluten-free baking to meat analogue products.

“Our parent company, the Meatless Farm, uses it for its burgers and ground, but it also has bakery, cereal, and snack applications,” said Shields. “There’s a really wide variety of things we can do with these pulse crops.”

But they’re also hoping to fill a gap in the general market, he added.

“We’ve had a huge amount of interest just in Canada alone for this product, and we’ve spread to customers in the U.S., Japan, the U.K., and Europe. Everybody’s crying out for this material — it’s just the right time.”