Maury Leyland Penno
Maury Leyland is Co-Founder of Leaft Foods, bringing deep experience in strategy, high-performance teams and systems thinking. Her background spans engineering, corporate leadership, governance and strategy. She began her career in the high-performance environment of Team New Zealand's 1995 America's Cup campaign before moving into strategy consulting with The Boston Consulting Group, and later held senior executive roles at Fonterra leading major strategy and transformation initiatives.
Bringing a step-change to land use productivity.
As the world grapples with climate change and rising demand for protein, Leaft Foods is rethinking how we produce food. Founded in 2019 by dairy industry veterans Maury Leyland and John Penno, the company was inspired by a simple but powerful idea: a hectare of land growing forage crops can produce far more protein than the same hectare used to raise cattle. Traditional livestock farming, is one of the least efficient ways to turn sunlight, rain and soil into protein. Leaft's answer is to extract protein directly from the humble lucerne leaf. Using a gentle, proprietary process, the company isolates Rubisco — often called nature's most abundant protein, and the very molecule responsible for photosynthesis in every green plant. The result is a clean-label, allergen-free protein with a nutritional profile that rivals or beats whey, egg, and soy, alongside natural iron and other nutrients. Nothing goes to waste: alongside the protein, the process yields livestock feed that boosts milk production and an ingredient for pet food. The company sells its protein through its own consumer brand, Leaft Blade, a ready-to-drink protein shot, as well as to food manufacturers looking to fortify products like juices and yoghurts and replace ingredients like egg. Alongside major sustainability gains, the model offers arable farmers a viable option. Leaft is scaling its Canterbury facility with the goal of proving that better land use can feed more people with great nutrition, while asking less of the planet.
Kai Anamata mō Aotearoa
10–12 November 2026 · Motueka Memorial Hall