Mass redundancies at VFG as it winds down UK operations

Plant-based category darling The Vegan Food Group has wound down operations in the UK, with mass redundancies and core brands removed from supermarket shelves.

The Grocer understands around 60 people have been made redundant from VFG in the UK, including approximately 30 people at its York head office and 32 from its Clive’s Purely Plants site in Dartmouth.

At the same time, The Grocer has been told 60% of staff at the business’s production facility in Lüneburg, Germany have been made redundant, with additional resignations.

Chair of The Vegan Food Group Matthew Glover refused to answer specific questions from The Grocer on the future of VFG, or confirm the number of redundancies, but said: “Decisions were made in the interest of creating a permanent, profitable operation to produce and distribute sustainable plant protein across Europe.”

VFG is mostly backed by Veg Capital, a vegan investment fund, where Glover is also a director. This is in turn funded by the Ahimsa Foundation, a US charitable foundation.

In an interview with The Grocer in 2024, the business said it was aiming to become the “vegan Unilever”. But it has now become the latest in a long list of failed endeavours in the plant-based category, joining the ranks of VBites, Garden Gourmet and Meatless Farm – which VFG itself saved from administration.

VFC separation 

As part of the major shake-up within VFG in recent months, subsidiary VFC Foods, made up of chicken alternative brand VFC and Meatless Farm, will be separated from the wider group and run by co-founder Adam Lyons as a standalone business.

VFC will continue to receive financial backing from the Ahimsa Foundation, with Lyons telling The Grocer this week the change “brings real stability and clarity”. VFC Foods has racked up more than £18m in losses over the course of its history, but Lyons said the spun-out business would be focusing on “stabilisation across operations, finance and commercial delivery”.

The VFC brand is currently not on supermarket shelves, but there are plans to bring products back in 2027. 

“We’re excited about the future of Meatless Farm and the work of the team in Germany to manufacture and distribute high-quality plant protein products across Europe in the decades ahead,” Glover added.

As reported in The Grocer’s sister title British Baker, Clive’s Purely Plants has also ceased production at its Dartmouth bakery with all 32 staff made redundant, despite VFG investing £650k in the operation six months ago.

Site lead Gary Baker said colleagues had “valiantly” continued working at the site before Christmas, before being let go on 19 December. Baker and his chief engineer have stayed on temporarily to wind things down and keep the site secure, with initial talks on its sale believed to be underway.

The latest changes follow massive board-level shake-ups in September, with the exit of group CEO Dave Sparrow after five years at the helm of the organisation following “mutual agreement”.

CFO Phil Eden also left the business at the same time after less than a year in post, for “new professional opportunities”.

Read more:

• Meatless Farm and VFC to separate from The Vegan Food Group

• Just Egg failed to launch in UK due to lack of legal sign-off

• Vegan Food Group’s founders on building ‘the vegan Unilever’

With the UK business in flux, the German side is also facing challenges. VFG sold TofuTown’s second production site to The New Originals Company in October 2024 – a move Sparrow said at the time was “crucial for our long-term growth plans”. Since then, The Grocer understands TofuTown’s signature line had sourced product made by external tofu manufacturers, before it was discontinued from mid-2025.

The site in Lüneburg has seen 60% of its staff made redundant in recent months, and according to sources has “completely discontinued” the production of TofuTown branded meat alternatives and vegan spreads and sauces.

The factory is to be the main production facility of vegan egg alternative Just Egg in the European market, owned by US firm Eat Just, which after years of setbacks launched into German supermarkets this week.

VFG, which has exclusive rights to manufacture and supply the product in Europe, announced it would spend £5m on a fully automated production line in the Lüneburg factory when it unveiled plans for the European launch in April last year.

Just Egg has yet to launch into the UK market, as reported this week by The Grocer, due to regulatory issues.

Eat Just first outlined plans for a UK launch for Just Egg – which was an early beneficiary of the US plant-based boom – back in 2018. It applied for authorisation of mung bean protein as a novel food in January 2021, but hadn’t received approval from the FSA when it announced its launch in April.

The food safety regulator found mung bean protein to be safe for consumption last July, and said it was not considered to be nutritionally disadvantageous – prompting the brand to announce an Ocado launch in the UK last August.

However, it has since emerged Just Egg did not actually go on sale, due to the need for ministerial sign-off on the FSA’s approval, before it was permitted to launch in UK supermarkets.