Oat Milk Advances From The Supermarket Into The Stock Market

Food writer Corby Kummer spoke with Boston Public Radio on Thursday about how Oatly, a company that sells oat milk products, made its Wall Street debut.

“It turns out there’s very big Chinese and big business money behind it,” he said. “Today is a very big day for Oatly, because now it has an IPO and it is maybe going to be valued at $10 billion by the end of the day.”

Many environmentally conscious consumers are drawn to oat milk and plant-based products as a way to lower their carbon footprint, Kummer noted.

“More and more consumers are making these choices that favor the environment,” he said. “But there’s also the complicated factors that the products we’re exposed to that have the money to get into stores have big international money behind it that we might not like.”

Kummer is a senior editor at The Atlantic, an award-winning food writer, and a senior lecturer at the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition and Policy.