Verdino Green Foods is launching Unfished, with a new range of revolutionary plant-based fish alternatives targeting vegetarians, vegans and flexitarians, at Plant Based World Expo, Olympia (booth H24).
Plant-based fish has currently a relatively low retail value of £6M in the UK (which equates approximately to 1% of the size market). Therefore, Verdino Green Foods sees this as a major potential for both food service and retail – and believes the Unfished brand is well placed to drive the growth.
Unfished is the most diversified plant-based fish portfolio currently available internationally, with a rapid evolution and an extensive number of product innovations introduced in less than two years. Unfished’s rapid evolution covers all the biggest seafood segments, with alternatives to tuna, salmon and smoked salmon, as well as white fish and breaded fish, all part of the UK launch. The products are sold under Verdino Green Foods’s trademarks, Unfished® PlanTuna®, Unfished® PlantZalmon® and Unfished® PlantFish®.
“Unfished offers the food service industry a unique range of plant-based fish alternative products from sashimi to fillets,” says Raul Ciurtin, Verdino Green Foods Founder. “We know that there is a fast growing but unfulfilled demand for fish alternatives in the UK – which means there is a massive opportunity for Unfished to explode this market. Unfished products have been developed to allow customers to enjoy plant-based meals without any compromise on taste and texture, but critically for the food service industry, are convenient and very easy to use in all the meal solutions that it needs. The demand is there for quality products that deliver on these important points, and Unfished is here to meet it.
“We are already working with development chefs to produce recipes for our initial offering, and we’re confident that chefs across the foodservice channel will be inspired by how easy it is to simply swap our plant-based fish into the great dishes they currently produce with fish.”
Raul Ciurtin adds: “Based on Verdino’s extensive experience within the food service sector, we believe we have the expertise to scale up the Unfished offer fast. We see huge opportunities for Unfished in pub and restaurant chains with breaded fillet, in QSR, with vegan and plant-based tuna sandwiches and salads, and with our Poke Cubes, which we can make plant-based for any outlet tapping into this food trend. Early customer testing in the UK has generated enthusiastic responses for the range.
“We know that product innovation has exploded plant-based meat and dairy alternatives, and people have been waiting for the same thing to happen with fish alternatives.”
Verdino will be offering tasting samples of the Unfished range at booth H24 of Plant Based World Expo (30th November to 1st December 2022), to showcase the quality and benefits that the range can provide foodservice.
The Unfished UK foodservice range (all frozen) includes: PlanTuna® Flakes, PlantFish® Breaded Fillets, PlantFish® Breaded Sticks, PlantFish® White Fillet, PlantZalmon® Fillet, PlantZalmon® Sashimi, PlanTuna® Sashimi.
The Unfished brand delivers much more than that just quality fish alternatives. It means less overfishing, more biodiversity and a more sustainable food system for future generations, for healthier oceans and their valuable resources.
“Our business is rooted in pea protein as our core protein base, but our Unfished products also use rice and fava bean proteins. As with plant-based meat, most of the sustainability gains come from the food. It is simply more sustainable to create food from plants as opposed to animals, and the rapid growth in consumer interest in all parts of plant based demonstrates that they understand this. Now it’s time for foodservice operators to work with us and turn interested consumers into delighted customers.”
Verdino Green Foods is an innovative plant-based company from the Transylvania region in Romania. Since 2019 Verdino Green Foods has developed a broad range of plant-based meats, cheese and now fish products. Verdino is market leader in its home country, Romania, and has expanded into Spain, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany, Hungary and Poland. The products are award-winning, picking up trophies at the Plant-Based Taste Awards, V-Label awards, Men’s Health Good Food Awards and PETA Deutschland’s Vegan Food Awards.
For sales enquiries call 07724 543 730, email at hello@verdinofoods.com or visit www.verdinofoods.co.uk.
The UK logistic partner is Peter Green Chilled, based in Somerset. Verdino Green Foods look forward to work with end-user customers and the wholesaler and distributor network to make their products – and this new plant-based category – as widely available as possible
