All PFN ARTICLES

The Forbes Asia 30 Under-30s list just dropped, and guess what? The future of food, fibre, and function has a Southern Hemisphere accent. New Zealand and Australia aren’t just keeping up, they’re quietly producing some of the most exciting young founders on the planet. Not influencers. Not crypto bros. Actual scientists. Actual biotech founders. Actual climate-smart inventors.

Enter Shake Your Plants - SYP, the surprisingly cool plant-based drink powder brand turning hydration into a functional, flavourful ritual. Started by two fed-up friends in Dubai, SYP is what happens when kombucha, herbal know-how, and next-gen sustainability have a very dry, very hot baby.

Here’s a sentence we haven’t said in years: New Zealand just made a smart, future-focused science move. And it could actually pay off with huge bioeconomy returns.

It’s the kind of supermarket sighting that should spark chaos in the vegan snack aisles. A plant-based Nutella? With oat and almond milk instead of dairy? Surely that’s the moment the palm-oily, sugar-slicked classic finally catches up to the alt-dairy revolution. Right?

First the lettuce shortage. Now this. UK supermarkets are being hammered by cyberattacks as Co-op, M&S, Nisa, Costcutter are all caught with their digital pants down. Shelves are bare, payments frozen, customer data leaked. Execs are now muttering “blockchain” and “resilience” like last-minute prayers.

In a gut-churning replay of the Chilean cherry catastrophe that saw tonnes of fresh fruit left to rot thanks to Maersk’s China-bound logistics fumble, this week it’s bananas under the boot—900,000 boxes of them, to be exact, rotting in Panama’s sweltering Bocas del Toro heat. Why? A local workers’ strike over social security reforms has brought the region’s biggest export lifeline to a screeching halt.

In a curious twist of weather changes meets cuisine, HelloFresh has teamed up with Oxford’s Dr Joseph Poore and trend forecaster Dr Morgaine Gaye to dish up a glimpse into your 2050 dinner plate and it’s not what your nana would recognise. Think soy sprouting in Scotland, edible fashion accessories, and AI-powered recipes designed to save your gut and the planet.

What if New Zealand could out-milk the cow without a single udder in sight? That’s the promise Daisy Lab's just dropped, successfully pumping out multiple grams per litre of bioidentical bovine lactoferrin using nothing but yeast and a bit of fermentation finesse.

There’s an uncomfortable smell in the produce aisle and it’s not from the shiitakes. As headlines around Australia continue to orbit the 'Beef Wellington' mushroom murder trial of Erin Patterson (shown left in custody- ABC Australia) , mushroom growers are facing a very different kind of toxic fallout in the form of public distrust.

Somewhere between sushi night and mum's stir-fry lies the next brain-boosting superfood, at least according to a growing body of research. Enter ganjang, the dark, salty, fermented Korean soy sauce that’s been quietly biding its time in the condiment aisle… until now.

In the cloudy Los Ríos region of Chile, Cran Chile just pulled off the biggest cranberry harvest on the planet - 30,000 tonnes. No subsidies. No Frankenfruit. Just patience, precision, and a climate which outclasses the North.

Fonterra, New Zealand’s dairy colossus and global cream-of-the-crop exporter, has just made its most serious move yet into the future of milk, without the cow. Its startup investment Vivici, a precision fermentation outfit co-founded with Dutch dsm-firmenich, has launched into the US market, bringing with it a cow-free version of whey protein looking, functioning, and tasting just like the original - except it’s brewed.