All PFN ARTICLES

New Zealand has dropped $42 million into a brand-new Biodiscovery Platform, with the goal of turning native biodiversity into export-ready pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, and functional foods. Announced by Science, Innovation and Technology Minister Dr Shane Reti, the seven-year investment will fund the newly formed Bioeconomy Science Institute, which aims to translate cutting-edge R&D into products that actually make it to market.

Australia’s food future just got a shot of adrenaline. Startupbootcamp Australia has unveiled its latest Cluster Connect accelerator cohort and the line-up reads like a bio-food dream list. Mushrooms, cultivated meat, seaweed biotech, native plant supplements, all under the eye of the federal Department of Industry, Science and Resources. It’s no longer just drones and packaging with the focus shifting squarely into biomanufacturing for food.

Swees Plant Based Foods, the Thai maker of the country’s first vegan cheese, has rolled out a new line called CleanBean. Think Beev Steaklets and Chick*n Bites, designed to fry, grill, or simmer in a green curry without a label full of additives.

Amazing to think a whey product can come not from a cow, but from water. New Zealand’s Nutrition from Water (NXW) has just unveiled Marine Whey™ Golden 35, a protein concentrate clocking in at 35% and designed for bakery, nutrition, and dairy-alt applications. Whats amazing is it’s grown from microscopic aquatic organisms, not milk.

Forget kale chips, Israel’s Brevel wants you crunching on microalgae pasta and crackers. Using illuminated fermentation (think: high-tech photosynthesis in a tank), Brevel has cracked the code on turning algae into something you can actually eat without holding your nose. The result? Protein-rich tagliatelle looking like it belongs in a boutique pasta bar and dark, nutrient-packed crackers screaming “future snack aisle.”

Pasture grown crops like Barley may soon jump from stockfeed and beer kegs into your latte glass. Scientists at Plant & Food Research are turning hull-less barley into smooth, creamy dairy alternatives - milks today, yoghurts tomorrow, with a nutty, fibre-rich profile speaking directly to oat-milk drinkers hunting for something new.

Whitworths has just dropped the UK’s first unprocessed walnut-based meat-free mince, and it’s a quiet challenge to the fake-meat aisle. Forget long ingredient lists and over-engineered soy bricks, this mince is just walnuts, lentils, and quinoa, spun into a texture that actually chews like beef. At £3.20 a pack, it’s aimed squarely at shoppers tired of the ultra-processed plant-based tag.

Plant proteins aren’t just a fringe choice anymore, they’re quietly embedding themselves in the weekly menus of ordinary Australian households. Fascin8foods’ mushroom-based FROOM™ has landed in Delidoor’s plant-based frozen meal range, now reaching families, professionals, and seniors who rely on the brand’s 12,000 weekly deliveries.

Forget bland mush in nursing homes as New Zealand’s The Pure Food Co takes its age-care nutrition smarts offshore. Its French subsidiary, The Pure Food Co France, has teamed up with healthcare giant emeis and Sysco France to deliver meals with modified textures (IDDSI 4) that look and taste like real food, not clinical slop.

The world’s biggest food fair just got a plant-and-cell facelift. Anuga’s 2025 edition in Cologne is giving prime floor space to a new 'Anuga Alternatives' hall and it’s not short of headliners. Beyond Meat and Oatly are on the list, but so too are tofu makers like Omami, algae caviar producers like Jens Møller, mycelium innovators like Pacifico Biolabs, sunflower protein players, and egg-free specialists Neggst.

It’s finally here - CowFree milk and cheese, real dairy, zero cows. Israeli based, Strauss Group and Imagindairy have pulled off what was unthinkable a decade ago - supermarket-ready milk and cheese made by precision fermentation technology, not udders. Microbes like Aspergillus oryzae now crank out whey protein 100% nutritionally identical to the cow version.

Precision fermentation just scored a $10.4 million boost from the Endeavour Fund, with AgResearch leading a five-year programme to turn pine pulp and other local side-streams into high-value food proteins and ingredients. Framed as a low-emissions bioeconomy pathway, the project is designed to convert forestry waste into scalable, export-ready ingredients that sidestep livestock emissions and feed into the next generation of sustainable foods .