Leaft Foods. Photo: RNZ / Nate McKinnon
An innovative Canterbury company producing alternative proteins from leafy green plants has signed a new deal with one of Asia's largest importers of food and dairy ingredients.
Leaft Foods was founded in 2019 by former dairy executives John Penno, Synlait's co-founder and ex-chief executive and Maury Leyland Penno, formerly of Fonterra.
From its Rolleston base, the company extracted proteins from leafy lucerne crops to create plant-based, animal and allergen-free ingredients for sectors including food manufacturing, pet food and livestock feed sectors.
Capitalising on the global boom of sustainably-produced alternative proteins, the company signed a new supply deal with Lacto Japan, a publicly listed Tokyo-headquartered multinational food ingredients business.
Co-founder Maury Leyland Penno said it would be sending its "hero product" the Rubisco protein isolate to Japan, as it could be used as a plant-based alternative to emulsifiers like egg whites or gelling agents in food manufacturing.
Maury Leyland Penno and John Penno, founders of Leaft. Photo: supplied
"The concept of extracting Rubisco protein from leafy forage crops is one that's been known for a very long time to have a lot of potential," she said.
"[Rubisco] is a very highly concentrated protein that performs extremely well in bakeries. So if I was to offer you a muffin or a cake and I replaced the egg with Rubisco protein isolate, you wouldn't know the difference."
She said the new deal will see "hundreds going on thousands of tonnes" of the protein being sent to Japan, a "highly sophisticated" market.
"It's really exciting partnerships for us," she said.
"This partnership opens the door to us having really quite a significant volume over the next few years of our production, so we're talking many tonnes into that market over the coming years.
"They've been connecting us with their customers and we've been working with our protein with them and with their customers to show what it can do."
Penno said its Rubisco protein had an amino acids profile that was even greater than for whey protein.
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She said protein was only a small part of what was inside the leaf.
Leaft founders Maury Leyland and John Penno Photo: Supplied
"So we have other streams, we've got a zero-waste process that comes from that link and a significant amount of that goes back into the dairy farming system.
"And when it goes back into the dairy farming system, our major product is a protein optimised silage. It's actually better for dairy cows they but they produce more milk and they have lower nitrous emissions."
She said being zero waste was very important to the company, when compared to other alternative protein value chains.
"That's something that has been a real struggle in some of the more alternative proteins, where you have a very small part of the stream which ends up as the product, and then a real question mark over what to do with everything else."
Furthermore, it targeted high performance athletes with its Leaft Blade product that came in ready-to-drink, 100-millilitre "performance fuel" sachets featuring Rubisco.
Photo: Supplied
Penno said they launched the company to find more environmentally-friendly options for food production in New Zealand, that were also good options for farmers.
Nudging elbows with dairy and meat sectors, she said there was plenty of room in the booming proteins market for more options.
"We think overall for New Zealand, this integrates really well in terms of providing new opportunities for farming that allow us to look forward."
Lacto Japan's Oceania general manager, Takeshi Shimizu said it was not every day that it discovered such an exciting new protein.
"What impressed us most was not only the protein system itself, but the fact that we have been able to work with it in a range of promising applications from the start.
"The quality, texture and flavour of the foods produced meet the exceptionally high standards that Japanese consumers expect."
Lacto Japan company files showed it was expanding its plant-based food ingredients to accommodate veganism and dairy allergies, that also contributed to nutrition and health, due to high demand from Japanese food manufacturers.
In 2021, Leaft Foods received $10.3 million from the Ministry for Primary Industries' Sustainable Food and Fibre Foods Fund - matched by $15.5m in co-investment - towards a five-year project to develop the new leaf protein concentrate from crops and its technology and intellectual property.
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