All PFN ARTICLES

China’s food strategy should be setting off alarms across New Zealand and Australia. Beijing is not merely trying to feed its population anymore, it is building a vertically integrated protein factory system spanning genetics, fermentation, synthetic biology, AI-led agriculture, ingredient processing and export manufacturing. Yet ANZ still largely behaves like a commodity frontier economy: grow it, ship it, hope the market stays loyal.

Winter in New Zealand doesn’t just mean gumboots, soup and shorter days anymore. It also means the return of one of the country’s most quietly luxurious food sectors - black truffles. North Canterbury producer Kings Truffles has confirmed harvesting will begin in early June across its Waipara Basin and Claremont Station blocks, signalling the official arrival of New Zealand truffles for 2026.

Heineken has just nudged beer into strange new territory: the gym bag. Its UK launch of Outd00r Brewing is a 0.0% alcohol-free lager range with electrolytes, vitamin C and magnesium, positioned as an “isotonic 0.0 lager” for the post-run, post-ride, post-padel, post-whatever crowd. In other words, beer is no longer just trying to be booze-free. This functional beer now wants to be useful.

Clinical evidence helps point the way. A randomised 3×3 crossover study, published in a peer-reviewed journal and indexed on PubMed, shows that adding avocado to a mixed meal can improve post-meal blood glucose response and satiety, particularly in overweight adults. For GLP-1 users, those outcomes are not theoretical, they map directly onto daily challenges around energy dips, under-eating and nutritional adequacy.

Fresh, live fermented foods are quietly breaking out of the health-food corner in the UK and sauerkraut is leading the charge. Once seen as a sour continental side dish, kraut is now being re-discovered as a flavour-forward, everyday food, buoyed by growing interest in gut health, fermentation literacy, and mounting consumer distrust of ultra-processed foods.

“There’s never been a better time for ANZ artisanal food producers to enter the China market.” That’s the assessment from Iain Langridge, MD of In2AsiaExports, who has spent more than a decade helping premium international food and wine brands establish themselves across China’s fast-evolving and ever changing food landscape.

The 2025 FoodTech 500 reads less like a hype parade and more like a post-mortem. Plant-based hasn’t vanished, cultivated meat hasn’t collapsed, but the centre of gravity has shifted. The companies still standing are quieter, more technical, and far less interested in convincing consumers to “change behaviour”. This year’s list rewards those building infrastructure, ingredients, and systems that slot into existing food supply chains.

Dubai, Jan 26–30, 2026 marks the launch of Gulfood 2026, the world’s largest annual food & beverage show, bringing together thousands of global exhibitors across food categories, from traditional products to cutting-edge food tech and plant-centric innovation.

Canadian Maia Farms isn’t trying to win shelf space with a brand. It’s embedding itself inside foods people already eat. Their mushroom and mycelium ingredients are 'scaling up and are showing up' invisibly in thickening sauces, adding fibre to comfort meals, boosting protein in savoury dishes without changing flavour or texture. The consumer doesn’t meet Maia at the fridge. They meet it already on the dinner plate.

Emirates is seeing a significant uptick in vegan meal preorders as travellers increasingly choose plant-forward options, pushing the airline to rethink its in-flight cuisine strategy. In 2025 the carrier served more than half a million vegan meals, up by 100,000 year-on-year, and demand continues to climb across global routes including London, Sydney and Bangkok. Emirates attributes growing vegan interest not only to plant-based passengers but also to non-vegans seeking li

For years, dairy-free cream has talked a big game but quietly failed the barista test. Now New Zealand based, ANDFOODS looks like it may have cracked something more meaningful, not in a lab, but in cafés and full-scale facilities stretching from China to Auckland and Singapore.

For decades, the meat industry framed alternative proteins as fringe, fake, or faddish. Now, as MEAT the book prepares to land as a top-ten Spring 2026 science release, that narrative is quietly collapsing. Written by Bruce Friedrich, Founder of GFI - Good Food Institute, the book doesn’t argue against meat consumption at all, it argues the method of producing meat is obsolete. And crucially, many of the world’s largest meat companies agree.