Learn English with the News – Oatly gets a sprinkling of stardust as it rides the wave of alt-milk

Oat milk is revolutionizing the industry of one of the most popular drinks across the world. As celebrities serve as living sponsors for the drink and younger generations tend to choose milk alternatives as a response to the global environmental crisis, Swedish oat milk Oatly is growing at an astronomical rate. Let’s learn about it with todays “Learn English with the News” segment, and don’t forget to check out our website for the accompanying English language exercises to improve your English!

Watch the video and then do the accompanying English language exercises.

The news is a consistent source of entertainment, knowledge and discovery that never ceases to exist and always comes out with more and more material each day. Because it plays such a vital part in our lives and is so important to keep up with, it is without a doubt a piece of your everyday routine that can’t go ignored. 

Whether it is to understand the ramifications of recent legislation passed, to hear about recent events and grasp the potential consequences to your country, or simply hear about what is happening in other countries in order to compare them to what’s happening in yours, the news is certainly a staple in our lives and the most consistent way to get information.

This is why Scrambled Eggs has decided to unite two of your biggest worlds: learning English and keeping up with what is happening in the world. We hope our challenging daily exercises, composed of listening, vocabulary and comprehension exercises in English, will satisfy both of those above worlds in a satisfactory and also entertaining way.

So enough about introductions, let’s get to today’s Learn English with the News topic:

Now that you’ve had a listen, let’s put your knowledge to the test with some of our vocabulary and comprehension exercises:

And that’s it for today’s English lesson, where you can improve your English with the news and current events. Do you have any comments or special requests for us for the next edition of Learn English with the News? Be sure to leave any feedback you have in the comments section below, as we would love to help you on your quest to learn the English language!

For other Learn English with the News segments, be sure to check out the rest of our posts:

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Full Text:

“As tastemakers go they don’t get much bigger than celebrity power couple Jay-Z and Beyonce, with Jay-Z’s investment in the Oatly drinks brand sprinkling stardust on the booming alt-milk industry. Last week, the Swedish oat milk-maker was valued at $2bn (£1.56bn) after it sold a 10% stake to a star-studded cast of investors that included Oprah Winfrey, Jay-Z’s entertainment company Roc Nation, Natalie Portman and US private equity firm Blackstone. The $200m-share sale is a big moment for the food business, which, after several decades in the Swedish wilderness, is enjoying stratospheric growth thanks to a combination of guerrilla marketing and good timing. Sustainability reports are typically a dry affair but Oatly’s cut to the chase, offering a no-nonsense translation of what its promise to be “a good company” means. In short: “Don’t be evil!” This irreverent style has made oats sexy to under-40s trying to make more sustainable food choices. Oatly’s sales nearly doubled to $200m in 2019 and they see similar growth this year albeit with a coronavirus-sized caveat. The cash injection will be used to build a global network of factories. With the US now its biggest market. a second site is being built in Utah while a plant in Singapore will help its push into Asian markets. Although founded in the early 1990s, Oatly was little known outside Sweden until the arrival of their CEO Toni Petersson in 2012. The entrepreneur has made the brand stand out by hammering home the message that oat milk is better for the planet than producing cow’s milk, which generates higher greenhouse gas emissions. Oatly has come a long way from the labs of Lund University where in the early 90s Prof Rickard Öste – who co-founded the company with his brother Björn – set out to develop a plant-based alternative to cow’s milk. Öste’s patents underpin the manufacturing process and the academic remains the company’s head of science. The company is being tipped for a stock market listing although Petersson is tightlipped about what the future could hold. Big investors have been pouring money into plant-based food companies such as Beyond Meat, gambling that the number of people embracing vegan and vegetarian diets or becoming flexitarian (reducing their meat intake) will continue to grow. Many investors believe demand for plant milk will grow for a very long time. The naysayers however, say we are less than five years away from peak plant milk. While oat milk sales are booming, the demand for soy and almond milks has already plateaued in the UK. But Petersson bats away suggestions that oat milk is a fad, insisting the market is only in its infancy.”