Oatly to open oatmilk plant in Texas in 2023, its third US production facility
The site – which will produce an estimated 150 million liters of oatmilk annually and will have the largest footprint of the Swedish company’s three North American facilities – will join plants in Millville, New Jersey; and Ogden, Utah.
An Oatly spokesperson told us that the oats supplying the new factory will primarily come from Canada: "The new facility will produce both oat base and finished goods. The coupling of these capabilities under one roof will streamline operations, and more importantly, help to reduce our transportation carbon footprint."
Additional sites in Singapore, China, and the UK, are also planned, said Oatly, which posted a net loss of $60m in 2020 on sales up 106.5% year-on-year to $421.4m, reflecting its continued investment as it ramps up production and aggressively expands into new markets,
Four years after entering the US market, Oatly products can now be found in >7,500 retail shops and 10,000 coffee shops in the United States (where it generated revenues of $100m in 2020), and more than 32,000 coffee shops and 60,000 stores across the world (as of Dec. 31, 2020).
In the Chinese market – which it entered in 2018 via the specialty coffee and tea channel - Oatly has been able to scale rapidly via an e-commerce partnership with Alibaba and an exclusive partnership with Starbucks in 4,700+ stores, said the company, which was recently targeted by activist investor Spruce Point Capital Management in a 124-report alleging that it omitted and manipulated facts in its prospectus and in a recent investor presentation and “will never achieve profitability,” allegations the firm has strenuously denied.
Further reading:
- And now the lawsuits… Oatly hit with shareholder class actions following short seller report, such suits becoming more common, says attorney
- “Oatly will likely never make money in a notoriously fickle and deflationary food industry,’ claims activist short seller; Oatly ‘rejects all these false claims’
- Oatly goes public, opens Utah factory: ‘We are going to prioritize growth over profit,’ says CEO
