All PFN ARTICLES

Zespri’s SunGold kiwifruit secures Good Housekeeping’s Best Snack Award for the fifth consecutive year, cementing its status as the growth driver of the kiwi category and a rising star in global fruit consumption. This follows from the EU's recent ruling giving the Green Kiwifruit from Zespri 'health status'.

US Based, The Mushroom Meat Co. has dropped four bold, pre-seasoned flavours in the form of Carne Asada Bites, Korean BBQ Bites, Pulled Carnitas, and Southern BBQ Pulled, all crafted for chefs who need speed without compromising flavour.

Seaweed has always been there at the edge of the tide - useful, humble, occasionally headline-grabbing, but next month in Nelson it gets its moment in the boardroom. The 2025 Seaweed Summit brings together industry innovators, science leaders, Māori enterprise, and even a Government Minister, signalling that this is no longer just a niche curiosity but a sector on the brink of being noticed.

Oscar Mayer has just dropped the “EveryBun Pack,” a dual box set of old-school pork wieners and its Not Hot Dogs, plant-based cousins born out of the Kraft Heinz x NotCo partnership. No blending, no meat-plant mashups, just side-by-side dogs in one pack, each wrapped separately like awkward cousins at a Labor Day cookout.

Lidl GB has just moved the supermarket game up a notch. The UK discounter is rolling out a bold new Live Well logo across its private-label shelves, linking everyday groceries to the lofty goals of the Planetary Health Diet by 2050. Think beans, grains, fibre, plant protein and yes, fully recyclable packaging too.

There’s nothing parochial about this Kiwi product. Wellington’s Fix & Fogg has pulled off what most Kiwi food brands only ever dream of. Eight nut butters now line every Whole Foods shelf across the United States, the home of peanut butter itself.

In a move turning the pharma playbook on its head, the University of Windsor and Shogun Maitake Canada are literally giving away a mushroom-based cancer fighter that early lab tests suggest could help the immune system knock out cancer cells.

New Zealand’s latest migration settings are colliding with its food ambitions. Net migration has collapsed to just +13,700 (YE June 2025), while a 13-year-high 71,800 citizens packed up and left, most young, skilled, and irreplaceable. Those empty lab benches and processing plants aren’t abstract,

LILO Desserts is a case in point. Their Desserts for Everybody™ pipeline turns Central Otago cherries, New Zealand dairy, or plant-based formats into indulgent-yet-functional mousses and crumbles that tick every box - Halal, gluten-free, vegan, or protein-boosted. The secret? A co-creation model with global partners that pushes beyond cheesecake into a scalable “LILO Dessert Solutions System.” (LDSS)

Oaty Butter wins New World Emerge - oat butter goes functional, supermarket-ready. Oaty Butter just snagged New World Emerge’s Start-Up crown with an oat-based, prebiotic-fortified spread that says “goodbye flimsy marg, hello breakfast upgrade.”

Australia just green-lit Vow’s cultivated quail meat for restaurants, yet up in Queensland, the LNP is reportedly moving motions to ban cultivated meat outright, highlighting the $70-billion livestock industry's political heft.

Alastair Hawken, founder of Hawkens Gingerbread in Grantham, has pioneered the UK’s first commercial grown ginger cultivation using hydroponic polytunnels. Inspired during Nottingham Trent University’s Help to Grow: Management Course, Alastair conceived a soil‑free flood‑and‑drain system to enable ginger production under controlled tropical conditions (25–30 °C and ~85% humidity), countering the UK's unsuitable climate for the crop