You don’t have to be vegan to appreciate the philosophy that has propelled Vitasoy over the past 80 years from humble beginnings in wartime Hong Kong into one of Asia’s largest suppliers of alternative milk products.
The company’s founder, Lo Kwee-seong, started off selling soy milk door-to-door as a low-cost source of protein at a time when the then-British colony was in the grip of food shortages and malnutrition. Today, Vitasoy is leading the charge to take the cow out of the milk business.
“The original intent of the company was to help make protein affordable,” current CEO Roberto Guidetti told Well magazine in May 2021. “Eighty years later, with the rise of climate consciousness, this story is extremely relevant.”
Guidetti, an Italian who previously headed Coca-Cola’s operations in China, has elevated sustainability goals into what he described to Forbes as “core corporate purpose work, as opposed to just adequate compliance to Hong Kong Stock Exchange guidelines.”
Vitasoy has extensive guidelines for suppliers, covering sustainable farming and fair labour practices, among others. One priority has been to cut the inputs that go into making Vitasoy products, reducing water usage by 22% between 2014 and 2021, fuel by 18% and electricity by 12%. Solar energy systems have been installed at Vitasoy plants in Hong Kong, Singapore and Foshan, China.
The company is also piloting the recycling of its Tetra Pak cartons, though Guidetti acknowledges that “there are some gaps to be addressed ... as not every market has the full infrastructure for carton recycling and circularity.”
Vitasoy has been named best in class both on sustainable revenue and sustainable investments in the 2023 Corporate Knights Global 100. Annual revenues doubled to 7.52 billion Hong Kong dollars from 2011 to 2021. While China makes up more than four-fifths of its business, the company also has growing operations in Australia (Vitasoy is Australia’s top plant-based milk brand) and exports to several dozen other countries.
Much of Vitasoy’s growth is explained by shifting consumer preferences as plant-based items like tofu, soy and oat milk gain popularity outside Asia. But Guidetti is confident that his sustainability drive has sharpened Vitasoy’s competitive edge.
“We are not obsessed by short-term growth at the expense of long-term results,” he told Well. “We want to grow faster than the market growth rate, but [to] do so sustainably.”
Find out which company we named Zero of our 2023 winter issue.
