All PFN ARTICLES

At the Vegan Society's 2026 New Zealand Vegan Sausage & Deli Awards, Christchurch-based Harmless Food Co. claimed the Supreme Award with its new Plant Based Bacon, a product judges praised for its flavour, crispness and realistic texture before it has even reached supermarket shelves. The company also collected Gold awards for its Plant Based Steak and Fish Fillet, making it one of the standout performers of the competition.

The United Kingdom has become one of the first countries to publish a government-backed roadmap identifying the food technologies expected to shape its future food system over the next decade. Developed by the Food Standards Agency (FSA) and Food Standards Scotland (FSS), the report highlights precision fermentation, biomass fermentation, cellular agriculture, controlled environment agriculture, molecular farming, gas fermentation and several other emerging production systems

A new generation of biotechnology is turning industrial waste gas to protein, opening up a potential pathway for countries such as New Zealand to expand food production without requiring additional farmland, freshwater or livestock.

Monty & Sons has launched a pasta range made from New Zealand-grown durum wheat, creating what is believed to be one of the country's first fully traceable paddock-to-plate pasta supply chains. The wheat is grown by members of the Wairarapa Grains Collective before being milled and manufactured locally.

The concept is simple but powerful. Imagine a Taupo Bio Valley stretching across New Zealand's geothermal corridor, where renewable energy, industrial heat and biotechnology come together to produce the next generation of food ingredients and nutritional products. Precision fermentation facilities could manufacture animal-free whey protein, casein, collagen and specialised food ingredients using microbes rather than livestock. Geothermal energy would provide the stable power

A kiwifruit grown in the Bay of Plenty travels 18,500 kilometres to Germany and can still sell for less than the same fruit sitting on a New Zealand supermarket shelf. Meanwhile, imported butter is increasingly appearing at prices below locally produced butter in New Zealand supermarkets. For many consumers it feels absurd. For New Zealand, it may be one of the most important economic signals of the decade - the Zespri Paradox.

For years the cultivated meat sector sold the world a future burger. But while investors chased steaks grown in stainless steel tanks, another opportunity was quietly emerging inside the same bioreactors - collagen currently valued at $10-$12billion and for cast to double in the next decade.

New Zealand biotech startup Forever Harvest may have just landed one of the most consumer-relevant future food breakthroughs yet - a pilot production of what it says is the world’s first cellular almond milk. Forget the lab-coat headlines for a moment. This is really about one thing consumers already understand as almond milk booms globally. Right now though the almond industry itself is under serious pressure from water shortages, climate instability and rising production co

Canned fruit is having a very unromantic moment. In California, Del Monte’s bankruptcy and cannery closures have left peach growers stranded, with USDA approving up to US$9 million to help remove trees after around 74,000 tonnes of cling fruit were left unsold. Pacific Coast Producers has picked up some volume, but roughly 50,000 tonnes still lacks a buyer.

“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.

Meat isn’t being replaced, it’s being re-engineered, and New Zealand is now part of that shift. Across food science, a new logic is taking hold, the future of protein isn’t “meat versus alternatives,” it’s meat plus. Hybrid protein , a blending of animal protein with algae, yeast, plants, or fermentation-derived biomass, is emerging as the most commercially realistic path to better nutrition, lower environmental load, and preserved taste. This isn’t a food trend. It’s a re

Since the first Gisborne truffière produced in 1993, more than 40,000 inoculated trees across 100+ sites have been planted from the Bay of Plenty to Canterbury. Yields of well over 100kg per hectare have already been achieved, reputedly among the highest in the world for cultivated truffles. Agronomically, New Zealand isn’t the problem but whether the country can become a serious player in the global truffle game.