Meet the Startup Making Free-From, Climate-Conscious, Plant-Based Milk for Babies

Grow with Iris co-founder Amy Langfield explains why she created a free-from, plant-based milk for toddlers, and details her conquest to develop an all-conquering infant formula.

Amy Langfield was an art teacher when her newborn daughter, Iris, was diagnosed with severe allergies to dairy and soy. It was a turning point.

When she prepared to return to work from maternity leave, she was looking for free-from infant formula products that could “fill the gaps”. “But there was just literally nothing,” she recalls.

This was 2017, and Langfield eventually found Prémiriz, one of the only soy-free vegan infant formulas available in Europe at the time (and in the world). It was difficult to obtain the product. It had to be imported from France to her home in the UK, and the product fell host to a global shortage in 2018, disappearing from the market soon after.

So the new mother decided to take matters into her own hands. With the help of a local product development company and her best friend of 30 years, Sophie Paynter (now also an ‘allergen mum’), Langfield set out to create a fortified, free-from line of plant-based milk for babies and toddlers.

Fast-forward to August 2024: Langfield and Paynter launched the first product from their brand, which they call Grow with Iris. The powdered Growing Up Drink – developed with paediatricians, dietitians, and allergy experts – is made for kids aged 12 months to four years, and free from the six most common allergens in the UK milk, soy, egg, gluten, tree nuts, and peanuts.

Instead, it contains what they describe as a short ingredient list of coconut MCT oil, date sugar, pea protein isolate, chicory fibre, natural flavouring, and a vitamin and mineral blend. The toddler milk has 5.3g of protein per serve, 1.8g of fibre, and over 70% of the daily recommended intake of calcium, iodine and vitamins C, D and B12.

The startup is hoping to meet the needs of the 400,000 UK toddlers who have allergies or are on plant-based diets, while catering to climate-conscious parents – being a powder blend where the water is added at home and distributed in recyclable pouches, its carbon footprint is lower than dairy competitors in 11 out of 12 impact categories, and 86% lower than ready-made toddler drinks for product end-of-life.

Grow with Iris wants to go beyond just free-from. “We have a huge protocol to make sure that we have no ‘may contain’ [labels],” says Langfield. “As an allergy parent, your biggest bugbear is having a ‘may contain’ on the back of the pack.” To do so, the Growing Up Drink goes through rigorous allergen testing across the production process – from raw materials through to post-packing.

Langfield and Paynter have big plans for the company. They are on a mission to create nutritious, safe, planet-conscious, and allergy-friendly products for children from newborns to teenagers.

For babies, taste is paramount

Up to 8% of British kids under three have a food allergy, and between 2-3% are allergic to dairy. At the same time, 8% of children in the UK now follow a vegan diet.

With a full-time staff of three, Grow with Iris is a challenger brand facing competition from established players offering kid-friendly plant-based milk – think Koko Dairy Free, Nestlé’s Little Steps, and Alpro.

Langfield calls the latter Grow with Iris’s biggest competitor. That being said, the Danone-owned company’s Growing Up milk is sold in ready-to-drink cartons, and – like most in the space – does not use RDIs for infants and toddlers.

“They work to adult RDI regulations because they can make more claims,” she says. “We’re really strict on saying: ‘It works for babies and it’s for toddlers.’ So we will work to their recommended dietary intakes, which we want to be honest and transparent [about] as both of us are allergy moms.”

Being free from allergens and climate-friendly is one thing – it’s no good if kids don’t like the taste or texture of these products. Grow with Iris has conducted three rounds of focus groups to ensure its milk satisfies toddler palates.

“We use an infant-grade pea protein, which is super fine and smooth, and it doesn’t clump,” says Langfield. “It looks like milk. It tastes really good… You can have the most amazing formulation. You could have everything in there that works – but if a child isn’t going to drink it, what’s the point? It needs to be a powerful discussion.”

Having entered the market just over six months ago, the startup is currently in its infancy, and sells the Growing Up drink direct-to-consumer via its website. It already has a broad base of customers, with parents aged 25-45 – and while they’re predominantly mothers, Langfield estimates that 10% of its buyers are dads.

To fuel its next phase of growth, Grow with Iris is rolling out its plant-based milk on Amazon this month, followed by TikTok Shop in March. It’s also in talks with Whole Foods Market in Ireland, which could pave the way for its European expansion in the future. For now, though, the focus remains on commercialisation in the UK.

Working with Innovate UK on infant formula

Grow with Iris is currently working with a co-manufacturer in Somerset, and has raised over £300,000 in pre-seed funding. In addition, the company has received £250,000 in R&D grants from Innovate UK, the government’s innovation agency, which it is using for both its toddler drinks and the infant formula it is working on- the holy grail of baby and toddler drinks. There are only a handful of dairy-free baby formula brands available worldwide, and many of them rely on soy, making them unsuitable for those with strict allergen requirements.

“Our project at the moment is the Biomedical Catalyst, and it’s to find and develop the optimal plant-based protein for use in infant formula,” says Langfield.

While that’s coming to an end this quarter, in its next project, the startup will conduct rigorous protein testing under strict protocols to identify the right ingredient, “because it might not be pea”, says Langfield.

“Back in 2017, when I was struggling with Iris, there wasn’t really any issue with the rise in allergies to legumes in the UK. As we’ve gone along, we’ve got more and more people saying they can’t have this or can’t have that,” she explains.

“It’s about working out: What’s going to be the most sustainable? What can we grow in the UK, or in Europe, that’s closer in terms of carbon footprint, able to do crop rotation, and hypoallergenic?

“We want to create a plant-based formula for infants that is the best it can possibly be, which is future-proofed in terms of sustainability and our future food chain, but it’s also for kids with allergies, and is bringing more choice.”

Baby formula is Grow with Iris’s ‘North Star’

Infant formula is a $56B market monopolised by dairy formulations and a handful of industry giants, which leads to supply problems like the infamous shortage in the US three years ago. That poses a problem for the many mothers who are unable to or don’t want to breastfeed.

About 5-10% of women are physiologically unable to breastfeed, and many more say they’re not producing enough or have nutritional deficiencies in their milk.

Today, 90% of formula products on the market are dairy-based, and the rest usually contain soy or rice. This is why it’s hard for upstarts to break through – and even when they do, sustaining sales is tough work, as can be seen with brands like BéBé M and Earth’s Best, whose dairy-free offerings are no longer available.

Grow with Iris predicts it will take at least five years before its free-from, non-dairy formula can come to market. “It needs to have all the protein and formulation ready to go, but also undergo human clinical trials,” says Langfield.

Regulation is a major issue. Plant-based or not, getting approved to sell infant formula is a complex, time-consuming process, which involves comprehensive testing based on strict standards, nutrient analysis, ingredient safety assessments, comparative studies with breast milk, and more.

If a formula product is devised for special medical purposes, companies can get through the regulatory framework quicker, says Langfield, though she doesn’t want to go down the medicalised route.

“I want it to be for healthy children and children who need it. So there’s not this sticker label on it, you know?” she notes. “It’s just on the shelf. It’s for everybody. And yeah, it’s not going to be an overnight thing. But we’re working so hard. It’s my North Star.”