Navigate the vegan market with insights and emerging trends from the vegan experts
Businesses today need more than just awareness – they need trusted expertise to navigate a rapidly evolving landscape. Our Industry Insights hub is designed to equip brands with the latest trends, consumer data and expert guidance.
As the world’s original and most trusted vegan certification, the Vegan Trademark has supported thousands of businesses globally in meeting the highest standards of vegan integrity. Through Industry Insights, we share our unique market knowledge and thought leadership to help you stay ahead, innovate with confidence and build greater trust with conscious consumers.
Explore our resources and discover how certifying with the Vegan Trademark can strengthen your brand and unlock new opportunities in the dynamic vegan market.
The first thing that comes to mind when thinking of the vegan industry is of course food and drink. With 10% of British people reducing or eliminating animal products from their diet, the demand for vegan options on menus both in and out of the home continues to increase.
- The value of the global vegan food market is expected to reach $57.6 billion by 2032.
- Deliveroo revealed its vegan takeaway orders increased 117% between January 2021 and 2022.
- It’s not just vegans buying: 96% of households buying plant-based meat and seafood already purchase conventional meat.
- A survey by The Vegan Society on how the COVID-19 pandemic altered the UK diet showed 53.7% had purchased meat alternatives for the first time during the lockdown. Of this group, 78.1% said they would continue to buy these products in the future.
Further Reading:
In a market flooded with buzzwords, clear labelling can make or break a product's success. Terms like ‘vegan,’, and ‘plant-based’ are increasingly used in conjunction with each other, but their meanings and implications vary significantly. For businesses, understanding and leveraging these distinctions is key to building trust with shoppers and creating loyal customers.
- Vegan Food and Living's Big Vegan Survey 2024 posed the question: “How do you prefer your food to be labelled?”– a resounding 74% of participants said they preferred the term vegan.
- Google Trends shows global searches for 'vegan' were almost 14 times higher than searches for 'plant-based' over the past five years.
- Social media proves that consumers are showing a higher interest in the word vegan, with #vegan being followed more times than #plantbased on both Instagram and TikTok.
Further Reading:
Vegan beauty refers to cosmetics and personal care products that do not contain any animal-derived ingredients and are not tested on animals. This customer base reaches further than those that identify as vegan, with 39% of British women who exclusively buy vegan beauty products not actually being vegan. With the global vegan cosmetics industry predicted to be worth $32.5billion by 2032, what is the future of vegan beauty?
A big driver in the rise of vegan beauty is the public pushback against animal testing. The awareness and negative perception of the practice has continued to grow over the past few years. This is something we’ve seen spread across all demographics and geographic regions.
- 79% of American adults support a federal law to end animal testing for cosmetics.
- 85% of British people find it unacceptable to test cosmetics ingredients on animals.
- 80% of Koreans support increased funding to replace animal testing with advanced methods.
- 85% of Australians oppose the use of animal testing for the development of cosmetics.
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73% of British people look for either cruelty-free or vegan certifications when buying cosmetics or toiletries, with 26% more likely to purchase a product that displayed both vegan and cruelty-free certifications.*
*Source: Survey run by Vypr for The Vegan Society April 2025, 526 respondents, 2024 Nat Rep age & gender
While vegan doesn’t always mean that a product is more sustainable, when it comes to an overlapping customer base, sustainability and veganism go hand-in-hand. Consumers are often looking for brands that are good for the environment, planet and their skin. With the rise in clean beauty trends highlighting minimal, natural ingredients in products, shoppers are checking labels more than ever:
- 81% of consumers said that the cosmetic industry should actively reduce high levels of plastic packaging.
- When buying cosmetics and beauty products 38.4% said the inclusion of ‘natural ingredients’ was an important consideration to them.*
- 67% of global consumers now look for sustainable beauty products.
- 68% of consumers seek out clean skin care brands.
- 60% of consumers expect brands to disclose the source of their ingredients, while 72% want clear expectations of what ingredients do.
Further reading:
Non-human animals are used in many ways across fashion supply chains. The most notable reasons are for their skins, fur, feathers and even their colour. But it’s not just increasing awareness of animal cruelty that is driving the growth of the vegan textile industry. There are also environmental factors to consider.
According to the Higg Materials Sustainability Index, which takes into account energy, water, chemistry and additional impacts used in material production, leather from cows is nearly three times as harmful to the environment as vegan leather and wool is twice as harmful as polyester.
The fashion industry has come under increasing pressure to improve its sustainability and ethical credentials but face some challenges in doing so. Globally, the industry is vast in both scale and complexity, which means that a number of different organisations are needed to tackle various injustices within supply chains.
- The global vegan women's fashion market size was valued at $535.1 billion in 2023 and is projected to grow at a CAGR of 14.1% from 2024 to 2030.
- 62% of Gen Z shoppers prefer to buy from sustainable brands and 73% are willing to pay more for sustainable products.
- The Vegan Trademark certifies several innovative vegan materials made from sustainable materials including Apple waste (Leap) and regeneratively grown Abacá banana plants (Bananatex).
- 95.7% of shoppers would like to see more vegan certified fashion.
Further reading:
The automotive industry is taking some steps in a more ethical direction, but products from animals can still feature heavily throughout the manufacturing process. In a 2022 survey by The Vegan Society, 75.2% of UK consumers said that they would like to see the removal of animal products from cars and other vehicles. Read the full report.
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