
ProteinTECH
Since 2018 this food technology innovation conference has attracted leaders in food production, food and agricultural science and innovators across the food manufacturing sector.
With a firm focus on practical business outcomes, this conference is aimed at people in the food production and food supply chains.
ProteinTECH showcases entrepreneurs achieving growth and niche market outcomes in emerging food technologies.
Our next event will have an exciting new hybrid format, running across multiple cities and live-streamed online!
Meet the trailblazers, innovators and early adopters making their own path through a rapidly growing new market.
Event Details
ProteinTECH is a food technology conference, providing industry pioneers with information on the latest innovations and developments in the alternative protein space.
The food technology sector has been transformed quickly as alternate proteins began to emerge. With increased venture capital and rapid market acceptance, growth in plant-based and cell-based technologies is bringing faster food innovations.
Delivering on health and sustainability claims, meat alternative foods have gone from speculation to mass production in less than 4 years.
Today’s start-up innovators are rapidly transforming cell-based science from pilot to commercial production of real seafood headed for consumers’ plates. Investment sums have leapt from millions of dollars per start-ups to hundreds of millions of venture capital. They are all racing to build scaled up production capability.
Demand from ESG investors and climate-conscious buyers really has accelerated rapidly compared to the plant-based phase.
With a firm focus on practical business insights, this conference is aimed at people in food production and food supply chains from paddock and greenhouse to lab to plate. This conference also showcases entrepreneurs achieving growth result leveraging their expertise and venture capital for emerging food technologies.
Keep Updated
Topics Covered
- Session 1: Emerging Products and Global Technologies
- Session 2: Case Studies - Product Development
- Session 3: Markets, Trends and Channels
- Session 4: Ingredients and Flavours That Work
- Session 5: Technologies to Deliver Texture
- Session 6: Case Studies - Marketing Perspectives: How To Be Different!
Who Attends?
The New Zealand agribusiness and food production industries, including:
- Agribusiness consultants
- Food science researchers
- Industry analysts
- Food technology managers
- Food science consultants
- Food industry pioneers
- Agribusiness technology suppliers
- Key suppliers to agribusiness and food science operations
- Corporate food & ingredient companies
- Agri and horticultural providers
Key Speakers

DEREK SARNO, Co-Founder, Wicked Healthy
UK-Based Derek Sarno is the co-founder of Wicked Healthy, LLC, and Developer of the pioneering Plant Based range Wicked Kitchen sold throughout the U.K. He also serves as Executive Chef & Director of Plant-Based Innovation for Tesco PLC, where he is leading the company’s efforts to bring delicious, unpretentious vegan foods to market. Prior to co-founding Wicked Healthy and partnering with Tesco, Derek served as the Senior Global Executive Chef for Whole Foods Market. Derek is a serial entrepreneur, founding several award-winning restaurants and food service companies in the United States, and co-author of the Whole Foods Market Diet cookbook (Fall 2018), and the Wicked Healthy Cookbook (Spring 2018).
THOMAS KING, CEO, Food Frontier
Australia and New Zealand’s next food frontier. Sausages made from plants, chicken grown from cells – alternatives to conventional meat are rising rapidly. However, is it still early days for this fast-growing sector? The development and adoption of plant and cell-based meat has remained limited down-under, until now.


SUZY SPOON, Owner, Suzy Spoon's Vegetarian Butcher
Suzy is driven by the needs of her customers for high quality, high protein meat alternatives that tick a variety of boxes.
Her customers demand clean label products that are superior in flavour, with familiar textures and shapes that work in traditional recipes and on the plates of busy families.
HAZEL MACTAVISH-WEST, Owner, MacTavish:West
Hazel is an independent consultant with 25+ years’ experience in plant and food science, natural flavours and fragrances, colours and bioactives.
In Australia, Hazel works with primary producers, food manufacturers, retailers and consumers, to create tasty, practical and on-trend new food products. A key focus is greater use of fruit and vegetables as healthy and functional ingredients in a diverse range of food products. Hazel provides food innovation training to the Australian food industry, especially the vegetable sector and regional agri-food producers.
Hazel has been awarded a Churchill Fellowship for a study tour of Europe in early/mid 2018 to investigate the opportunities to incorporate more fruit and vegetables into value-added, convenient, healthy foods.

Sponsorship & Exhibition Opportunities
ProteinTECH will be a tremendous opportunity for companies to maximise their exposure to the New Zealand alternative protein industry.
Innovatek has earned a well-deserved reputation over 20 years of providing both event sponsors and exhibitors with a unique independent platform for promoting their products and services to the industry in this region.
For further details contact John Stulen, (+64) 7 921 1382 or (+64) 27 275 8011, john.stulen@innovatek.co.nz.
