Protein Power: New Zealand's Solution to Global Demand

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Daisy Lab: Dairy-Free Products  

Daisy Lab is developing dairy proteins without using a single animal. Using precision fermentation, the company produces identical proteins found in dairy products.

Traditional fermentation, a process used for thousands of years to create staples like bread, cheese, beer, and wine, uses friendly microorganisms that live and multiply in the product, feeding on sugars and producing additional elements (like enzymes, proteins, alcohols, etc.). Precision fermentation is similar but can be trained to produce a variety of substances – from drugs and vaccines to flavours and proteins.

The upstream process is akin to making beer, wine, or medicines, while the downstream is similar to processing traditional dairy.

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Leaft Foods: Extracting Rubisco for a Sustainable Future

Leaft Foods is dedicated to reducing the environmental impact of food production through innovative technology. The company extracts Rubisco, the protein in green leaves responsible for photosynthesis. This highly functional, digestible, and non-allergenic protein has an incredibly low embedded carbon footprint.  

Though Rubisco is naturally found in all leafy greens like spinach, kale, and alfalfa sprouts, extracting it on a commercial scale has been a challenge - until now.  

Leaft Foods has developed a food-safe process that efficiently extracts Rubisco in a form that is keeps it in its natural state. Its technology taps into one of the planet’s most abundant and renewable food sources, paving the way for a new era in food production.

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Nutrition From Water (NXW): Marine Whey from New Zealand

NXW has developed Marine Whey™ from microalgae found in New Zealand’s biodiverse waters. Today’s traditional protein production is often inefficient and can compromise our waters, biodiversity, and natural environment. NXW sources nutrition from water by working with microscopic organisms found in freshwater and marine environments that can be fermented hyper-efficiently to create highly functional, protein-packed nutrition.

Marine Whey™ requires only a fraction of the water, land, and time compared to other protein sources and emits a fraction of the greenhouse gases. With a complete amino acid profile and non-GMO value proposition, it offers an untapped source of high-quality nutrition.

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