All PFN ARTICLES

The global nanocellulose market is swelling fast, tipped to hit between US $1.5 billion and US $3.4 billion by 2032, depending on who’s counting. Now, New Zealand’s AgriSea wants a slice of that action. Its new NanoSea plant in Paeroa has just completed first trials, marking what’s believed to be the world’s first commercial-scale seaweed nanocellulose biorefinery.

The Pure Food Co is quietly reshaping aged-care nutrition in New Zealand and Australia — and now its available at home. The company has gone beyond hospitals and rest homes, launching a home-delivery partnership with EAT that’s already winning praise from families.

Europe is putting farmers at the centre of the cultivated meat revolution. The CRAFT Consortium, a coalition of Wageningen University, Mosa Meat, Aleph Farms, Multus, Kipster, Royal Kuijpers, and RespectFarms, has begun designing the world’s first cultivated meat farm, backed by €2 million in EIT Food funding. The model promises to slash water use by 78%, land by 95%, and social costs by 56%, while giving farmers a direct stake in cellular agriculture.

Cacao and coffee, two of the planet’s most loved crops, are buckling under pressure. Cocoa prices have smashed past $10,000 a tonne, while weather stress is pushing Arabica uphill. Enter the bean-free brigade: innovators who promise the same taste experience, minus the deforestation, price shocks, and labour exploitation.

The global ashwagandha market is flexing hard. Valued at USD 0.76 billion in 2025, it’s set to crack the USD 1 billion mark by 2030, tracking a solid 9.2% CAGR. Growth is fuelled by stress-fatigued consumers snapping up gummies, chews, and clean-label supplements; sports users chasing performance recovery blends; and beauty brands pulling ashwagandha into skincare for its antioxidant and anti-aging profile. North America dominates demand, but Asia-Pacific is sprinting ahead,

There’s a quiet little revolution brewing in your supplement drawer and it’s not ashwagandha, rhodiola, or yet another adaptogen with a complicated name and questionable Instagram science. Nope. This one’s been around since Cleopatra and has been flavouring bouillabaisse and biryanis for centuries. Say hello (again) to saffron, the golden-hued stamen of Crocus sativus, now armed with clinical receipts.

What’s needed is a bold, structured, sovereign-aligned trans-Tasman alliance: AgAlliANZ, a joint food future built not on competition, but on co-creation.

Forget faux beef and alt-dairy drops for a moment. The real food revolution is quietly unfolding across Ethiopia’s wheat plains, Zimbabwe’s resettled farmlands, and the Caribbean’s import-slashed shopping lists and none of it is coming from Silicon Valley or European biotech labs. It's seen as the global south's quiet rebellion.

The location? Cell AgriTech Malaysia’s first cultivated meat production facility. The message? This is how the protein transition actually happens. Not through TED Talks and Silicon Valley sermons, but by embedding next-gen protein into the rhythms of daily life. Meat and mobility, side by side.

Two Chinese nationals have been charged by the FBI after attempting to smuggle a dangerous fungus into the United States. Not just any deadly wheat virus in the form of a mould - Fusarium graminearum, the crop-wrecking culprit behind Fusarium Head Blight. This isn’t a garden-variety contaminant. It’s a pinkish, spore-spewing agri-menace capable of decimating wheat, corn, barley and rice...

It started with lettuce. Now it’s flowers. Wonky Box New Zealand, the quirky produce disruptor known for rescuing twisted carrots and freakishly large parsnips, is turning its attention to the blooms we gift, grieve with, and guiltily forget to water. Emerge 'Wonky Flowers'!

Forget feedstock, New Zealand’s kiwifruit rejects are being stitched into a very different future. At the centre of it all is KiwiLeather Innovations, a next-gen biomaterials company quietly turning over 50,000 tonnes of orchard discards into a new kind of plant-based leather.