Business growth Business success

From kitchen experiments to global innovation: How Leaft Foods is revolutionising protein from Selwyn

26 Nov 2025

This article is sponsored by the Selwyn District Council

Leaft Foods has cracked the code – extracting rubisco, the world’s most abundant protein, directly from leafy greens. The result is a new class of high-quality food products with 97% lower carbon emissions than dairy protein, built on New Zealand’s farming expertise and now expanding into global markets from a thriving 35-person base in Selwyn.

Eight years ago, Maury Leyland Penno and her husband John were at a crossroads.

Both had carved out successful careers in New Zealand’s dairy industry, John as co-founder of Synlait Milk, Maury as a Fonterra executive – and both were asking themselves one of the big questions: what’s next for New Zealand agriculture?

“Dairy has been enormously important economically, but we wanted to find something that could be both high-value export and genuinely address environmental challenges,” says Maury from Leaft Foods’ Selwyn facility.

“We felt prepared to take a risk, step away from what we had been doing, and invest in looking for future options.”

But how?

The Hackathon Moment

The answer came during one of Lincoln University’s ‘hackathon’ events.

“Looking for opportunities, we attended a ‘future of food’ hackathon that was hosted at Lincoln University,” says Maury. “It was during the hackathon that we learned from a retired Plant and Food Research scientist who spoke about this opportunity to harness ‘the world’s most abundant protein’, the enzyme behind photosynthesis found in spinach, kale, alfalfa sprouts or any other leafy green.”

While it initially seemed like a “slightly crazy” idea, it had potential, especially given how well it might work with New Zealand’s exceptional soil quality and climate, and with no shortage of farmers experienced in growing lush forage crops.

What followed was a year of kitchen experiments and scientific research and eventually, the team successfully extracted a rubisco-rich green gel from pak-choy leaves in their home kitchen.

The Pavlova Breakthrough

The real eureka moment? A classic pavlova, made with rubisco.

“Rubisco famously behaves quite like egg whites,” Maury explains. “We replaced the egg whites with our Rubisco protein. That was really the moment for us when we felt like we’d proved the concept.”

The achievement wasn’t just symbolic. In the food industry, functionality matters as much as nutrition. Proteins need to gel, foam, emulsify, and behave predictably in manufacturing.

Rubisco’s unique properties – it’s an active enzyme rather than a storage protein like those found in seeds – give it exceptional functionality that rivals animal proteins. It also has an amino acid profile on par with animal proteins, an area where seed based plant proteins are lacking.

Building an End-to-End System

Today, Leaft Foods operates a sophisticated 35-person operation from their iZone facility in Selwyn, working with arable farmers in Southbridge who grow lucerne specifically for protein extraction.

The company produces two main products: a consumer liquid protein called Leaf Blade containing 17 grams of protein per 100ml pouch, and a protein isolate ingredient for food manufacturers.

Both products boast remarkable environmental credentials – 97% lower CO2 equivalent impact compared to whey protein.

The process uses 100% of each leaf, creating not just rubisco protein but also a protein-optimised silage that actually helps dairy cows produce more milk with lower nitrous emissions. And because of its complete amino acid profile, rubisco delivers not just functionality and sustainability but also the kind of balanced nutrition usually associated with animal proteins.

But building this sophisticated supply chain required the right location, one that could bridge cutting-edge science with agricultural expertise.

Selwyn’s Strategic Advantages

Location matters for a business bridging high-tech processing with agricultural supply chains.

For Leaft Foods, Selwyn offers a unique combination of advantages.

“We’re positioned perfectly between two worlds,” Maury says. “Close enough to Christchurch for access to research institutions and export infrastructure, but right next to the high-quality farming region where our crops are grown.”

“You can’t replicate that combination easily.”

The location provides access to Canterbury’s research ecosystem, including partnerships with MPI, (ex) Callaghan Innovation and the University of Canterbury, while keeping the company close to the high-performing arable farmers who grow their crops.

Selwyn District Council has been “very welcoming and engaging and excited about what Leaft is doing,” Maury says.

Leaft Foods secured USD $15 million in Series A funding in 2022, led by Khosla Ventures with participation from NBA star Steven Adams. The funding has enabled the company to now be ready to expand into the US sports nutrition market, where the company is ready to ramp up marketing efforts after quietly establishing their supply chain and regulatory approvals.

The Infrastructure Advantage

Looking ahead, the company’s ambitions are as bold as their product. Within five years, they aim to reach dairy-scale manufacturing capacity, transforming from a promising startup into a significant player in the global protein market.

It’s a vision that dovetails neatly with Selwyn’s own infrastructure planning. The district’s planned inland port upgrades will directly benefit Leaft Foods’ export operations, something Maury clearly appreciates.

“We’re really pleased to be beneficiaries of that foresight and investment that’s going on,” she says.

These strategic improvements don’t just help individual businesses—they’re strengthening Selwyn’s position as a genuine hub for innovative agricultural enterprises.

Leaft Foods has built their business on Canterbury’s agricultural expertise while creating products that can compete in global markets, very much a combination Selwyn’s economic development strategy aims to support.

From those early kitchen experiments to becoming a global player in sustainable protein, Leaft Foods shows what’s possible when innovation meets the natural advantages of doing business in Selwyn.

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