All PFN ARTICLES

Plant-based egg innovator, Crafty Counter’s new Protein Buns are the kind of functional convenience foods consumers are absolutely primed for - soft, gluten-free, microwave-ready, and stuffed with a hemp-based “egg” scramble packing 40% more protein per gram than a real egg. In a protein-obsessed food economy, this is the kind of micro-innovation that creates its own demand curve.

NXW, born in New Zealand in 2020 and now headquartered in Portugal, has achieved a category milestone with its Marine Whey™ ingredient. Together with SIG Group, they have completed their first commercial run of an affordable functional‐nutrition product for the MEA region: a UHT‐treated “Peach Power” marine whey yoghurt filled via SIG’s aseptic packaging solutions and tailored for local taste profiles.

Three startups have been crowned winners of the inaugural Bezos Centre for Sustainable Protein @ NUS × Enterprise Singapore “Sustainable Protein Startup Competition” at the Asia‑Pacific Agri‑Food Innovation Summit 2025 in Singapore. Each of the winners, cultivated meat startup, Magic Valley from Melbourne , Fermeate a photomolecular fermentation startup based in California and Terra Bioindustries from Toronto, Canada and involved in up-cycling agro-industrial by-products, wil

Singapore has formally shifted to a hybrid food resilience model, blending local production with trusted imports as it pushes back its “30 by 30” target to 2035. The new plan sets 20 percent local supply for fibre (leafy greens, mushrooms, beansprouts) and 30 percent for protein (seafood, eggs), down from the once-ambitious goal to produce 30 percent of all nutritional needs by 2030. The revision reflects hard realities: limited agricultural land, high energy and labour costs

In a world of weather shocks and geopolitical tension, Cellular Agriculture Australia has thrown down the gauntlet — food isn’t just sustenance, it’s national security. Their new white paper “Made & Grown: The Future of Food Biotechnology & Biomanufacturing in Australia” argues that investing in biomanufacturing is no longer optional; it’s a sovereign imperative.

PARIMA (France) has just become the first European company to gain regulatory approval for a cultivated meat product, its cultivated chicken, officially cleared by the Singapore Food Agency (SFA).

China’s next Five-Year Plan is shaping up less like an agricultural roadmap and more like a national tech manifesto and foodtech is suddenly in the mix. Beijing’s leadership has tied biomanufacturing to its industrial self-reliance strategy, signalling proteins, enzymes, and precision-fermented ingredients now belong alongside semiconductors and EV batteries in the country’s quest for technological sovereignty.

Kiwi, Leaft Foods has taken its green-tech know-how beyond the human plate and straight into the pet bowl. The Rolleston-based startup, best known for pioneering Rubisco extraction for human nutrition, has now applied its leaf-protein technology to create Alfalfa Protein Concentrate (APC), a nutrient-dense ingredient designed specifically for pet food.

Forget kale chips and charcoal lattes, 2026 is about gut health, protein, and stress relief-the holy trinity of food predictions.

Canada’s got a taste for hybrids, but not the meaty kind. Vancouver’s Maia Farms has unveiled The Shred, a next-gen protein that blends oyster mushroom mycelium and Canadian yellow pea protein, promising the chew, flavour, and versatility missing from earlier soy or wheat-based offerings. The startup says it’s using fermentation tech to mimic natural fibre alignment, producing a pull-apart texture that actually feels like food, not filler.

Did you know New Zealand still cages its breeding sows - mother pigs, literally. Behind the “clean green kind” image sit iron bars where breeding sows cannot even turn around.

Alt.Protein 25 conference trend emergence as Australia’s bioeconomy has entered its NextGen Protein moment. This new white paper by Cellular Agriculture Australia and ANU reframes food biotechnology as not just an economic lever, but a national security imperative. It argues that food sovereignty, via precision fermentation, plant molecular farming and cell cultivation, must be treated as strategic defence infrastructure.