HACKENSACK, NJ. — For Jim Breach, president of North American business, Flora Food Group BV, the future lies in using emerging technologies to branch into new categories and build the company’s presence in the plant-based dairy alternative category.

Flora Food Group, formerly Upfield Group BV, which generated €3.3 billion ($3.58 billion) in net sales globally in 2023, has had a busy quarter, undergoing a name change and acquiring its 15th manufacturing facility.

The producer of plant-based spreads and butters such as Country Crock, I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter, Flora, Blue Band and Imperial operated under the Upfield label beginning in 2018, when the group was spun out of Unilever in an approximately $8 billion acquisition by the investment firm KKR.

Now the global dairy alternative manufacturer has adopted the Flora Food Group name to better reflect its mission to deliver the “next generation of delicious, natural and nutritious food” focused on affordability and sustainability, according to the company.

“The name change to Flora Food Group is an exciting and logical step in the large-scale transformation we have delivered,” said David Haines, group chief executive officer of Flora Food Group. “The new name better reflects who we are, with Flora being one of our longest-standing and most popular brands loved by millions of families and professionals around the world.”

Flora Food Group expanded its US manufacturing capabilities with the acquisition of a facility in Hugoton, Kansas, in September. The site will serve as the hub for the company’s alternative cream and cream cheese products in North America alongside the company’s US hub for plant-based butters and spread products located in New Century, Kansas.

Breach said the acquisition will equip the company with the technologies to produce some products that are currently imported from its European facilities, such as Country Crock heavy whipping cream.

The acquisition underscores Flora Food Group’s emphasis on further developing its plant-based technologies, in addition to investments such as the approximately €40 million in the company’s Wageningen Food Science Center in The Netherlands.

Breach said that technological advancements in flavor and ingredient functionality in the past several years have been important, citing the development of products under its Violife brand. Since acquiring the brand in 2020, Flora Food Group has been able to expand Violife beyond its hard cheese offerings into cream cheese brick and tub formats.

“The technology wouldn’t have been there four or five years ago for us to provide consumers with a product that would compete with the animal-based versions of cream cheese,” Breach said. “What’s been great to see about (Flora Food Group) is how the technology has really increased the taste, the performance of the non-dairy alternatives. I think that’s what’s been sort of the fuel for consumers to continue to migrate over to plant-based dairy.

“We know consumers don’t want to compromise on taste. We know they don’t want to compromise on food performance. The fact that this technology has caught up and really closed the gap between plant-based and animal-based foods has been one of the significant movements to the growth of the category.”

While the company continues to eye new categories and format advancements made possible by technological improvements, Breach pointed to the bevy of opportunities in the company’s core categories.

“If we're having an honest conversation, the reality of it is the butter category still has some opportunity for us to convert consumers who are using animal-based butter into a plant-based butter,” he said. “So even within our home category, we see still a tremendous amount of growth and potential.

“The future for (the company) is a blend of growing our brands and providing our brands and products in new categories where we think we can bring technology and products that will be competitive to the dairy alternative, but I don’t think we’ll ever take our eye off the ball in our home category.”