Legacy Building: Vishal Vijay steers Agrocorp, one of Asia’s leading agri-commodities players, into its next era

For Vishal, steering Agrocorp into its next phase of growth involves moving beyond the traditional trading model of buying and selling raw commodities to position the company closer to consumers, with a focus on sustainability and innovation. Under his watch, the once purely business‑to‑business agri‑commodities player has expanded into plant proteins. In 2021, it introduced HerbYvore, a consumer brand built around soya‑free protein blocks and a Just Like Cheese range made from pulses such as peas and faba beans. The portfolio has since expanded to include Alte Egg, a plant‑based liquid egg alternative with zero cholesterol.

Two years later, Agrocorp announced its boldest move yet: a joint venture with Megmilk Snow Brand, one of Japan’s largest dairy companies, to scale its plant protein business. The new venture, Agro Snow, is headquartered in Singapore, with a wholly owned subsidiary in Johor, Malaysia, where a facility is under construction to produce pea protein, starch and fibre to serve Asia’s fast‑growing plant‑based food and beverage markets. “It’s the most value‑added processing that we’ve done so far. [We’re] utilising technology that’s new to us,” Vishal says. “It’s taking a leap of faith, but we’ve [found] a good partner in Megmilk. It gives us comfort that we have someone on this journey with us.”

At the facility’s ground‑breaking ceremony last November, Singapore’s senior minister of state for the Ministry of Trade and Industry, Low Yen Ling, stressed that the project was more than a business milestone; it was “a significant step in [the country’s] journey towards sustainable, innovative food solutions”, noting that pulses are affordable, environmentally efficient sources of protein. She also highlighted the project’s geopolitical importance, describing it as an early example of the Johor‑Singapore Special Economic Zone, designed to streamline the cross‑border movement of goods, people and investments. The initiative, she added, dovetails with Singapore’s Trade 2030 strategy, which puts innovation, research and development at the heart of the nation’s food security ambitions.

If Johor signals Agrocorp’s boldest bet, it also places the company squarely in the thick of a sector still defining itself. Plant protein, once touted as the future of food, is now in a period of recalibration. “It has gone a bit quiet,” Vishal says. The numbers, however, suggest continued momentum. Think tank Good Food Institute Asia Pacific reported that public investment in alternative proteins in the region surged 207 per cent between 2021 and 2022, from US$31 million to US$94 million, while private funding over the same period rose 45 per cent to US$556 million.

Vishal likens the sector’s trajectory to the early days of the tech boom, when excitement ebbed before the next wave of innovation. The companies that came to dominate, he notes, were not always the first movers but those that “waited, learnt and introduced their own spin on the basis of the learnings that had been developed”. For him, plant protein is at a turning point: a lull between the first wave of products and the next.

He believes the future will not be binary. “I don’t believe it has to be an either‑or,” he says, adding that hybrid models are already taking shape in sectors such as pet food, where plant‑ and meat‑based proteins are blended for reasons of sustainability, cost and nutrition. “You’ll see the same thing happen in human food, which would promote overall plant‑based consumption such that it becomes mainstream.”

Climate change adds urgency. With sourcing operations across Australia, Canada, the US and Eastern Europe, Vishal says the impact on crop yields is already visible, strengthening the case for plant‑forward diets. “Plant‑based food is extremely efficient in resource consumption. As we have more of these climatic conditions, and with an increasingly growing population around the world, you have to promote efficiency in your food supply chain,” he explains. That does not mean eliminating meat altogether. As Vishal, who is vegetarian, puts it: “You can’t just tell someone to stop eating meat. People like their chicken. But what if we gave you the same product that tastes and costs the same, and it has some plant‑based [component]? That, I think, is the best solution.”

Beyond pulses, Agrocorp now trades in wheat, rice and edible oils while laying the groundwork in coffee and cocoa. The aim, Vishal says, is to be involved in “more and more of the food people consume. Today, the company is like a pyramid, with commodities at the base. We want that pyramid to have more weight in the middle—more value‑added processing, more ingredients, and eventually, a presence with consumers as well.”

As he looks ahead, his goal is straightforward. “I’d like us to [also] be one of the leading food ingredients players in the region,” he declares, adding that success for the Johor facility would mean replicating the model elsewhere and deepening the company’s reach into consumer markets. That long view also shapes how he sees Agrocorp’s role in regions with young, increasingly affluent populations who care more about what they eat and where it comes from. “We want to be the company that facilitates that movement towards better nutrition, better sustainability and better cost‑effectiveness.”

For Vishal, legacy is both personal and professional. “You really only have two legacies,” reflects the father of three. “One is your family: you try to shape them to be the best people they can be. The other is the company. It’s rare to find companies that last beyond three or four generations of a family. We’re hoping to build something that goes beyond that.”

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