Unique leaf protein product being developed in CQ

Leaf Protein Company CEO and co founder Fern Ho said the company had set up a pilot plant in Biloela to produce alternative plant proteins.

She said the company was a food tech start up developing more sustainable, biodiverse and nutritious plant protein ingredients.

"Today, the market is very dependent on soy protein and wheat protein. About 60 per cent of the plant protein market uses soy, then 30 per cent is wheat and a really tiny percent makes use of things like pea,"she said.

"And there's all kinds of ramifications with this - lack of biodiversity, environmental issues, all the way through to health and nutrition.

"So what we're doing at the Leaf Protein Co is, as we say on our website, unlocking earth's most abundant source of protein - and the most abundant source of protein is a protein found in leaves which is used by the leaf to photosynthesise."

Ms Ho said every plant needed to photosynthesise to survive so there were a lot plants out there with a lot of leaves which have this edible protein which has not yet been commercialised as a biodiverse, sustainable food ingredient.

"And that's exactly what we're doing," she said.

In the Biloela trial plant, Ms Ho said they were extracting leaf protein as a food ingredient after doing background research on a range of different plant sources.

She said the reason they chose Biloela for the trial plant was because Russell Campbell of Alfavital came across their website and contacted them, suggesting that a lot of the alfalfa or lucerne that was grown in and around Biloela could be great source of biomass for our protein production.

"So, I went up in January last year to scope the feasability of making use of that available biomass - and found that one: there's a lot of it which is fantastic, and, two: there was a facility which we have invested heavily in which would allow us to process that biomass very close to where it's grown," she said.

Ms Ho said the company's technology meant they could take in any type of edible leafy material, but at the moment they were only using lucerne or alfalfa as the input material.

She said they had been working with one grower at Biloela, but were always on the look out for other leaf materials because they knew there was more than just lucerne grown in the area such as mung beans and herbs.

Ms Ho said the project was only at trial stage and they were not doing commercial volumes of any product yet.

"We have literally just gone from all our lab scale extractions and validations into this larger pilot scale up. The facility that we set up last year in Biloela is producing samples that we are sending to interested food manufacturers and ingredient distributors, who have been waiting patiently for these samples," she said.

"We obviously hope they really see the functional benefits of our ingredients versus what's in the market today and adopt those ingredients or want to take them on as an ingredient product to distribute.

"Our ingredients range from something that can be used as a plant protein ingredient in a health food bar or a green smoothie or juice, all the way through to more generic products like...in baked goods, in any packaged goods like snack foods, potentially plant based alternatives to dairy and meats and staples like pastas."

Ms Ho said it was an alternative plant protein ingredient as well as a natural binding ingredient like an egg white replacement.

"And that's the sort of stuff that food manufacturers...are really interested in so they can make 'better for you' products and start to reduce the number of synthetic ingredients in their processed foods with more natural ingredients and these proteins are a solution to that," she said.

"We're a B2B (business to business) company so we sell to businesses rather than to end consumers - we sell to the food manufacturers and it really depends on their new product development cycle and time frames, but I'd say it would be at least another 12 to 24 months before you see something (of ours) on the shelf in store."

Ms Ho is hopeful, however, of selling their products commercially to food manufacturers in the next six to 12 months.

"Leaf protein is not commercially available to date," she said.

Ms Ho said they had done extractions from all kinds of horticultural leafy products including lettuce, broccoli, broccolini, cabbage, cauliflower all the way through to plants like saltbush.

"Pretty much 90 per cent of products that you see on supermarket shelves - if you look at the ingredients on the back of products, you will see something that is either an emulsifer or some sort of binding type agent that is usually referenced as an E number and that's what the food manufacturers are trying to get rid of or reduce," she said.

"We provide the solution or alternative to those E numbers... which are often synthetic."

Ms Ho said one of the unique things about leaf protein compared to the other plant proteins in the market today was that leaf protein was higher in nutrition, but closer to animal protein.

"The bioavailability or digestability of leaf protein is actually comparable to animal protein versus other plant proteins which are much lower," she said.

Ms Ho said they were currently only employing five people at any one time at the trial plant.

"But, what we hope is to potentially expand once we see enough market interest so we can then start to ramp up to commercial volumes and that will need a lot more staff," she said.

As to whether they would stay in Biloela, Ms Ho said "we have excellent access to biomass so there's every chance we absolutely would".