Plant-based food business VBites has entered administration, the company’s founder Heather Mills has announced.
Mills founded VBites in 1993 as a manufacturer and wholesaler of plant-based meat, fish and cheese products. The company operated from its two UK manufacturing sites in Peterlee, County Durham and Corby, Northamptonshire.
In a statement, Mills said that while she had offered “every solution I feasibly could to keep [VBites] going,” the business ultimately suffered following demands that she stepped away from day-to-day management to secure essential investment.
Mills cited several challenges leading to the collapse, including “corporate greed” within the market and the “galvanised and well-funded marketing of misinformation currently being undertaken by the meat and dairy industries”.
Price rises in the global materials and utilities markets and the current state of the manufacturing economy in Britain following Brexit were also noted as key difficulties leading to VBites’ appointment of administrators.
James Clark and Howard Smith, of restructuring and insolvency specialist Interpath Advisory, were appointed joint administrators on 11 December. While the company’s directors sought to explore their options, a funding agreement was not reached, Interpath revealed, leaving no other choice for the business.
The joint administrators will continue to trade the site in Peterlee while they seek a buyer. 29 members of staff at the site have been retained to assist with trading, and an additional 29 employees at the site in Corby to assist with the fulfilment of outstanding orders. 24 employees across the business have been made redundant.
“The plight of VBites is not an isolated case and I think it’s important to take stock and highlight the various factors that are contributing to the struggles of companies like ours in the current market,” Mills wrote in her statement.
“The plant-based industry needs to take a lead from the dairy industry in unifying its voice but as a force for good and promotion of the facts – as opposed to a litany of lies and misinformation. We also need to work harder to demonstrate the long-term profitability of plant-based farming and manufacturing to the meat and dairy industries.”
She pointed to the similar struggles of other companies in the plant-based market such as Meatless Farm and Plant & Bean, the latter of which Mills bought out of administration earlier this year, adding that numerous plant-based businesses have faced issues such as unexpected investor pull-out and factory closures.
“It is unsurprising and inevitable that where profits are to be made, amorphous corporate entities will follow and unfortunately their practices too often undermine the entrepreneurial spirit, flexibility and agility of movement that saw plant-based entrepreneurs have so much success,” Mills said.
“There is too often a tendency to treat their investments as short-term experiments and opportunistic flights of fancy, embalm them in restrictive governance and then either walk away or enforce a takeover when the market hits a bump.”
Joint administrator and managing director at Interpath Advisory, Clark, said their immediate priority is to provide support and assistance to employees impacted by redundancy, as well as seeking a buyer for the business and its assets.
Mills expressed hope that the industry can “turn things around as a unified force,” with “well-intended capital, strategic vision and belief in a brighter future” required to achieve meaningful growth for the market.
She added a final note of thanks to VBites’ staff: “Thank you for the years of unwavering effort, thank you for the belief and I hope that you can take some solace from knowing that you have had a huge positive impact on the world through the work that you have done over the last 30 years.”
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