Planted: Rapid growth is followed by staff cuts
Keystone-SDA
Swiss meat substitute manufacturer Planted has reduced its workforce in recent months, particularly at management level.
+Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox
The company is talking about measures to increase efficiency.
Several managers have left Federal Institute of Technology Zurich spin-off Planted in the past nine months. They include the former head of communications, the head of sustainability, the head of quality, the head of marketing Switzerland and the Swiss head of production, as LinkedIn profiles show.
According to former employees, this is no coincidence: “Due to cost pressure, many experienced employees were replaced by young, inexperienced people or not replaced at all,” one person, who wishes to remain anonymous, told the news agency AWP. One of the reasons for this is the high cost of a new factory in Germany, which was opened last year.
More
More
‘The meat industry is our main competitor’
According to the trade union newspaper Work, Planted currently employs around 150 people, 46 of whom work in production. At the end of 2025, the company said it employed 200 people – and by mid-2023, this figure had risen to around 240, meaning around 90 jobs have been lost over the last few years. The company has never reported a mass redundancy (10% or more of the workforce).
Structures reviewed
“After several years of very rapid growth, we systematically developed our organisation further last year and adapted it to the next phase,” said a spokesperson. Structures were reviewed and priorities sharpened.
“This also included personnel decisions that were not always easy for us,” she added. The company is now “more efficiently organised” and well positioned for sustainable growth. Demand for vegan products also remains strong.
+ More people giving up meat in Switzerland
Since its foundation in 2019, Planted has received a total of around CHF115 million from investors. Its backers include entrepreneur Stephan Schmidheiny, Swiss national team goalkeeper Yann Sommer and United States investor L Catterton.
The company has been producing in Kemptthal, canton Zurich, since 2021. In June 2025, a second factory was opened in Memmingen, Bavaria. This should double production capacity and create over 50 new jobs. According to the spokesperson, the majority of employees are still based in Switzerland.
Planted generates half of its turnover in the retail trade and the other half in restaurants. The products are available in Switzerland, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, France and Britain.
More
More
Plant-based meat market in Switzerland set to grow to CHF361 million by 2030
Adapted from German by AI/mga
We select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools to translate them into English. A journalist then reviews the translation for clarity and accuracy before publication.
Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. The news stories we select have been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team from news agencies such as Bloomberg or Keystone.
If you have any questions about how we work, write to us at english@swissinfo.ch
