Dr John Penno, Co-Founder of Leaft Foods

Dr John Penno is one of New Zealand’s most experienced dairy and agri-food executives and the co-founder of Leaft Foods, the Canterbury company extracting high-value protein from leaves.

Penno’s career is rooted in New Zealand’s dairy industry at a depth few founders can match. He co-founded Synlait, the specialist dairy company that grew into one of New Zealand’s largest milk processors and served as its chief executive through the company’s formative years, building it from a greenfield site in Dunsandel into a publicly listed, export-focused business. He later served as chair of Synlait’s board before stepping down in January 2026. His earlier career included senior roles in dairy science and farm systems research, giving him a technical foundation that most agribusiness executives don’t have.

That combination, deep dairy science, commercial scale-up experience and a genuine understanding of where New Zealand’s protein economy is heading, is what he brought to Leaft Foods when he co-founded the company in 2019 with Maury Leyland Penno. Leaft’s technology extracts Rubisco, the most abundant protein on Earth, from green leaves and converts it into a high-functioning protein isolate. The result is a plant protein with an amino-acid profile comparable to animal protein, a product that could sit alongside dairy ingredients rather than simply replacing them.

Based in Selwyn with around 35 people, Leaft has attracted backing from Khosla Ventures and Ngāi Tahu Holdings. Its 2025 commercialisation partnership with Lacto Japan marked a step from pilot production toward commercial supply. The company operates from Canterbury farmland, using locally grown leaf crops as its feedstock, a deliberate connection to the agricultural landscapes Penno has spent his career working in.

Penno’s profile is noteworthy because few people in New Zealand have built at his level in both the old and the new versions of the protein economy. He co-founded one of the country’s most successful dairy processors, then co-founded a company working on the next generation of protein. It is a career that connects New Zealand’s agricultural past to its food-tech future: a theme explored further in the Leaft Foods story and the wider Food-tech hub.

Sources: Leaft Foods · NZ Herald · NBR