With more than one in three Brits drinking plant based milk every day, two entrepreneurs spotted an opportunity to take a sip of the UK market worth over $500M.

Milky Plant, an appliance that makes plant based milk at home, was founded by Nadina Grigoras and Michael Kalu during lockdown with just £500 and in two years turned over £2M and are set to top £10M in sales this financial year.

Milky Plant is an innovative and unique appliance and while there are other appliances that claim to make plant based milk at home, none have the functionality or features that Milky Plant boasts. The other appliances are extra fine blenders which don’t separate the left over pulp from the milk and can’t self clean like Milky Plant can.

The sales of Milky Plant have increased 450% from year one to year two and now going into year three they predict that these will increase 350% going into their third year.

Success hasn’t come over night for the serial entrepreneurs. They set up their first business when they met while studying at Queen Mary University but it wasn’t a success. They then went on to set up an agency creating apps which used to help fund a restaurant in Mayfair which they sold just before the pandemic hit which is when they started their plant based journey.

Michael said: “Our first business was an app which was a game where friends could chase each other through the London Underground. They could bet on who would win each race for a few pounds and the winner would take all the bets. We didn’t research gambling laws and regulations properly though so it was quickly shut down!”

Nadina added: “I was diagnosed with high cholesterol at a very young age so this made me re-evaluate my diet and I decided to go plant based. I was really shocked at the additives and sugar that was found within shop bought plant milks and also that the Tetra Pak packaging could not be easily recycled. I tried to make my own plant based milk by soaking nuts and oats and straining it, but it was a messy and time consuming process. So Michael and I had the idea to invent an appliance that makes milk at home.”

The business was crowd funded as the couple decided to test if the idea was of interest by creating a 3D image of their idea for the machine and advertised it via social media. They sold enough to give them the confidence that people were interested in it and offered to either refund the payments or said that they would use the money to develop Milky Plant and would ship as soon as it was ready. Enough consumers said that they were keen to wait and so the machine was put into production.

Their international team has also doubled in size over the last 12 months. Michael, originally from Nigeria, and Nadina, originally from Moldova, have both lived in the UK for around 12 years and are currently based in London.

The Milky Plant machine costs £290 and it takes around 180 uses to recoup the costs of the machine, depending which ingredients are used to make the milk.