Swees already has a mature plant-based cheese range with mozzarella, cheddar, Swiss and mozzarella chilli variants, but according to the firm’s Head of R&D Sirinapa Thasak, its recent focus has been on developing cheese-based snacks in order to break into the snacking market.
“The growth of plant-based dairy cheese in western markets has been strong and it is quite common there, but growth in ASEAN has been relatively slow,” Thasak told FoodNavigator-Asia at the ThaiFex-Anuga Asia 2024 show.
“This is one of the reasons that we felt we should also enter the arena of cheese snacks, and have been innovating towards this with items such as cream cheese, cheese dips and also our cheese sticks.
“Our main ingredient is nutritional yeast which is high in proteins and vitamins in addition to having a natural cheesy flavour, and we also use soy protein isolate for the snacks.
“The cheese sticks in particular were developed to be an easy to grab-and-eat snack targeting convenience store consumers in Thailand which previously have had only one major brand of cheese stick which was dairy-based.”
The development of the cheese stick was supported by a grant from the Thai government supporting national innovation, due to the firm’s use of rice protein in the product.
“In developing the cheese stick, the main challenge to solve was that of providing it with support, and to do this we made a breakthrough in using rice protein to solve that particular issue,” she said.
“This is the first time this has been done in the world for any sort of vegan cheese, and has simultaneously positioned rice as the outstanding ingredient for this product which is likely to greatly benefit Thailand due to rice being a major crop in this country.
“In addition, the cost of rice is also cheaper than many other novel but rare ingredients so this can help to bring down the price of the cheese sticks as well as to position the rice as a higher-value ingredient.
“The convenience store niche is where we aim to focus most of our efforts to fill with this new product.”
The vegan cheese sticks are also touted to have no cholesterol and a source of high vitamin B12, targeting children with this functionality to aid brain development.
Cheese not common
That said, cheese as a whole remains a relatively uncommon category in Thailand, which means that the Swees team still has its work cut out in order to break out of being a niche category.
“Many Thai consumers simply do not eat cheese, and not just vegan cheese but also regular dairy-based cheese,” she said.
“So essentially without this base, having them make the change to vegan cheese means that it is an even more unfamiliar scenario for them, and we simply have to make that much more effort to adjust product taste and texture to match what they are looking for.”
In addition to supermarkets and convenience stores in Thailand, the firm also exports to FairPrice in Singapore as well as Vietnam and Hong Kong, but expansion is currently limited due to the logistics involved.
“Our products currently still require refrigeration and cold chain to ensure the shelf-life of nine months, so we are still limited to small quantities for now,” she added.
“To increase attractiveness and range, moving forward we will also be looking at more functional innovations that can include more protein, fibre or vitamins; as well as using soy protein isolate to develop more plant-based items such as flavoured protein shakes.”
