All PFN ARTICLES

“Top Food Trends for 2026 – Protein Reigns” still holds, but the protein story now lives inside a bigger behavioural shift where people want options that fit their day, fit their wallet, and fit their mental bandwidth. Single-serve meals, snack-ready bites, and genuinely useful plant-forward proteins are now the scaffolding of everyday eating.

It’s the kind of milestone that makes both baristas and biotechs blink: The New Milk is officially here, the world’s first dairy milk made entirely without cows. Co-created by Israeli food-tech pioneer Remilk and heritage brand Gad Dairies, this precision-fermented milk delivers the taste, texture, and nutrition of real dairy, just without the livestock. For consumers, it’s a genuine milk experience that’s lactose-free, cholesterol-free, and 75 percent lower in sugar; for in

NXW, born in New Zealand in 2020 and now headquartered in Portugal, has achieved a category milestone with its Marine Whey™ ingredient. Together with SIG Group, they have completed their first commercial run of an affordable functional‐nutrition product for the MEA region: a UHT‐treated “Peach Power” marine whey yoghurt filled via SIG’s aseptic packaging solutions and tailored for local taste profiles.

New Zealand’s only commercial tea plantation based in the Waikato, Zealong Tea Estate, has steeped itself into global recognition, literally, after being listed among the world’s best tea houses in “150 Tea Houses You Need to Visit Before You Die” by Lannoo Publishing.

Chocolate giant Barry Callebaut is hedging its bets, keeping cocoa close while diving headfirst into the cocoa-free future. The Swiss heavyweight has entered a long-term partnership with Planet A Foods, the German start-up behind ChoViva, a chocolate alternative made from local crops like sunflower seeds. The deal neatly straddles both camps: traditional cocoa dominance and the growing demand for sustainable, non-cocoa chocolate.

Three startups have been crowned winners of the inaugural Bezos Centre for Sustainable Protein @ NUS × Enterprise Singapore “Sustainable Protein Startup Competition” at the Asia‑Pacific Agri‑Food Innovation Summit 2025 in Singapore. Each of the winners, cultivated meat startup, Magic Valley from Melbourne , Fermeate a photomolecular fermentation startup based in California and Terra Bioindustries from Toronto, Canada and involved in up-cycling agro-industrial by-products, wil

Japanese food-tech outfit Sankyo Foods is launching a microwavable “GABA-Rice” range under its retail arm Food Base, tapping into the rising wave of mental-wellness functional foods. Each serving contains around 100 mg of the neurotransmitter-precursor GABA via germinated brown rice blends enriched with traditional Japanese grains and beans, comfortingly familiar rice with added wellness appeal.

New Zealand’s fruit exports hit $5.68 billion in 2025, a record 42 percent increase on the previous year. Kiwifruit remained the standout performer, driving the total value of fresh and processed horticultural exports to $6.85 billion.

The idea of growing coffee indoors isn’t just a lab-curiosity anymore, it’s going commercial. Meet Big Guns Coffee, a U.S. veteran-and-daughter venture using hydroponics to grow coffee in a warehouse-style setup, controlling light, temperature, humidity and CO₂ to mimic the tropical highlands.

If every Aussie and Kiwi ate just one extra 100 g serve of fruit and veggies a day, the ripple would be enormous. AUSVEG says, an extra handful translates to almost a million tonnes of produce, $3.3 billion in added value to the vegetable supply chain, 13,000 new jobs, and $1.4 billion in healthcare savings by 2030. In New Zealand, similar modelling suggests NZ$838 million in lifetime health savings and 94,000 healthy life years gained from just a modest daily veg boost.

Global food manufacturers and retailers are leaving money on the table in plant-based proteins, slowing category growth and exposing supply chains to avoidable risk, according to a new investor-backed analysis. The report finds most big players still treat plant-based as a side aisle, not a profit engine, which weakens resilience by over-relying on animal protein.

In the desert heat of the UAE, a vast new 4-million-litre precision fermentation facility will take shape and quietly, New Zealand’s Fonterra has a stake in the mix. Through its backing of Netherlands-based Vivici, Fonterra now sits within an Abu Dhabi partnership alongside The EVERY Company and the Abu Dhabi Investment Office (ADIO), marking one of the world’s largest industrial-scale fermentation projects designed for high-purity, Halal-compliant protein production.