(Yicai Global) Nov. 27 -- China’s Yantai Shuangta Food unveiled nine pea protein-based “meat" products yesterday and announced its strategic transformation from a supplier of artificial meat raw materials to a brand owner.

Shuangta, which is based in China’s eastern Shandong province, held a new product launch event in Beijing to introduce its bogus-beef patties, charade chicken cutlets, sham ham, and faux-sausage and meatballs. The product launch marks a new starting point for the company as a customer-oriented brand company, rather than its earlier genesis as a business-oriented raw material supplier, its Chairman Yang Junming said at the event.

Formed in 1992, Shuangta, which cut its teeth making traditional Chinese food green bean-based vermicelli, first forayed into the pea protein market in 2012 and now claims about 40 percent of the world's output of the legume-derived nutrient and thus has become the globe's largest plant protein raw materials producer, information on the firm's website shows.

Shuangta and US-based plant-based meat giant Beyond Meat penned a supply contract for the American company to buy the first 285-ton shipment of pea protein in February after the Chinese firm announced its own plant-based meat product brand in September. Shuangta had previously mainly provided raw materials to plant-based meat producers via dealers.

The Beyond Meat deal pushed Shuangta's shares [SHE:002481] swiftly up, before the firm announced a CNY2.15 billion (USD327 million) private placement in March, with most of the proceeds thereof to go toward a pea protein extraction and processing project.

Shuangta's shares closed 0.25 percent down at CNY15.70 (USD2.39) at noon today, giving it a CNY19.98 billion market cap.

Editor: Ben Armour, Xiao Yi