With its award-winning oat-based cheese alternatives, Mö moves plant-based from niche to norm, combining Nordic craftsmanship with proprietary technology to create products that appeal to all eaters and expand the category beyond traditional boundaries.
Lohtaja, Finland (15th January, 2025) – Mö Foods, the Finnish food company redefining cheese through oats, has secured €2.4 million in funding led by Nordic Foodtech VC. The raise will enable Mö to scale its proprietary production technology and prepare for international expansion. As global demand grows for foods that balance indulgence, sustainability, and competitive pricing, Mö’s approach signals a shift within the cheese alternative category toward oat-based products that are designed to stand on their own merit and fit naturally into the everyday diet.
Founded in 2017 by siblings Annamari Jukkola and Marjaana Vuorio, who grew up on a Finnish dairy farm, Mö combines Nordic design thinking with sustainable food innovation to reinvent cheese through oats. Using a proprietary production process, Mö’s products match dairy on flavor, texture, and performance while maintaining a short, natural ingredient list and minimal processing. Made from locally grown Finnish oats – among the purest and most sustainable crops in the world – Mö’s products include meltable and sliceable cheeses now available in major Nordic retailers and soon expanding across Europe. Mö has been recognized with multiple honors, including Finnish Food Innovation of the Year 2024 and Best No-Goat Vegan Cheese 2024 for its Mö Chavre.
Traditional cheese is among the most resource-intensive foods on the planet. Mö believes that oat, as an ingredient, can provide a solution. Thanks to their technology, Mö can use the entire oat, eliminating sidestreams. In addition, using oats as the main ingredient reduces the carbon footprint and minimizes land use throughout the production chain.
“Our goal at Mö has always been to create foods that reflect how people eat today: good food at a fair price, made responsibly,” said Annamari Jukkola, CEO and Co-Founder of Mö. “Growing up on a dairy farm gave us a respect for how cheese is made, and also for the value people place on it. We’re bringing that same quality and care to a new process, using oats to make something familiar, but lighter on resources. This funding helps us do that at scale.”
The funding is a sign of where the food industry is headed. In the “post-vegan” era, consumers are now looking for products that are easy to use and meet their standards of taste, texture, and melting properties.
“Mö is taking unique Finnish oats and their healthy properties to a completely new level,” said Mika Kukkurainen, partner at Nordic Foodtech VC. “Added-value products, with unique technology, are the exact kind of food knowledge that we want to support and scale internationally. Mö is setting the standard for the whole industry on how plant-based products should meet expectations in taste and experience – and how this expertise can be taken to international markets.”
Mö’s growth has outpaced the wider plant-based alternative cheese category, which expanded by roughly 18% in Finland last year. In 2024 alone, Mö’s retail sales grew 88% year-over-year, driven by new product launches, expanded distribution, and consistent sell-through across major chains, including S-group, K-group, and Lidl Finland. Beyond retail, the company is preparing to license its technology to major European food producers, a model designed to accelerate category-wide adoption.
“This funding marks a turning point for Mö,” said Stefan Lindberg, Chairman of the Board at Mö Foods. “By combining deep food science with consumer understanding, Mö Foods has built a model that works at a time when most of the category is struggling to find one. Mö is showing that plant-based can be both premium and profitable.”
Mö’s performance underscores a larger shift in how the food industry must approach plant-based innovation: not as a niche segment, but as the natural evolution of mainstream food production. By combining taste, nutrition, and scalability, Mö is setting a new benchmark for how fast-growing food companies can compete – and lead – in traditionally mature categories like cheese.
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Additional information:
Annamari Jukkola
annamari.jukkola@mofoods.fi
+358 400 463723
