Do we like Monde Nissin?
Philippine food maker: Lucky Me! noodles, SkyFlakes biscuits, and Quorn meat-free foods in the UK. Based in Santa Rosa, Laguna.
Our score: 5 out of 10. Mixed. It's a solid everyday food business, but it has had a recall, a labour dispute and heavy Quorn losses with job cuts. We'd hold off for now.
Monde Nissin started in 1979 as Monde Denmark Nissin Biscuit Corporation. Its Philippine-Indonesian family owners built it into the country's biggest instant noodle and biscuit maker (Lucky Me!, SkyFlakes). It listed on the Philippine Stock Exchange in 2021.
In 2015 it paid £550m for Marlow Foods, the maker of Quorn and Cauldron. The meat-free boom then faded. The Grocer reported Marlow losses above £60m for 2023, and Monde Nissin UK wrote down its investment in Marlow Foods.
In July 2022 some Lucky Me! noodles were recalled in the EU and Taiwan over traces of ethylene oxide. The company said it isn't added to its products and is used to treat spices and seeds. Its CFO said the actual volume recalled was small, but the hit to public confidence was big.
On the people side, in 2019 contract workers at Santa Rosa went on strike over regularisation and what they called union-busting. Local government and the labour department mediated. In the UK, Quorn made redundancies and its owners put in money to steady it.
Our score is 5. It's a big, established food company. But we found a recall, a labour dispute and a struggling Quorn unit, and nothing that clearly shows it going beyond the basics on ethics.