According to latest reports, VBites, a vegan food business owned by Heather Mills, has fallen into administration, with 24 employees across the business being made redundant. 

The BBC has shared that the plant-based company has blamed “rising raw material costs and energy” prices.

After establishing the business in 1993, founder Mills, ex-wife of Sir Paul McCartney. then acquired the supplier Redwood Wholefood Company in 2007. Its website claims VBites was “established long before the current trend in plant-based startups” and branded itself as “the leading makers of meat-free, vegan meat substitutes”.

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Though Statista notes the global vegan food market is expected to reach a value of over 22 billion US dollars in 2025, companies such as VBites have had to contend with consumers altering their shopping habits throughout 2023, a year when food inflation hit a 45 year high.

Between 2014 and 2019 the number of vegans in Great Britain quadrupled and reached 600,000, according to The Vegan Society. However, New Food previously reported that Pret a Manger was “closing the majority” of its vegetarian stores due to low demand in early 2023, suggesting the demand for plant-based products from UK consumers has dwindled throughout the year.

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Produced in the UK, VBites has been creating vegan food products including meat, fish and dairy alternatives for over 25 years.

Speaking to the BBC, Mills explained the business’ collapse is “extremely distressing for [her] on a personal level but also for [her] wonderfully loyal and hard-working staff”.

According to Mills, she had previously invested “tens of millions of pounds into the business” in an attempt to generate “every solution [she] feasibly could to keep it going, but sadly [her] and [her] staff’s efforts have been thwarted”, the BBC reported.

Interpath Advisory administrators were reportedly appointed on Monday 11 December following “talks to raise new funding for VBites collapse”, the BBC shared. In the meantime, VBites “would continue to trade from the site in Peterlee whilst it looked for a buyer for the business and its assets”.

New Food has approached VBites and Interpath Advisory for a comment and will keep its readers updated with any developments.