Mycofeast Buys New Zealand Dairy Protein Startup Daisy Lab

British biotechnology firm Mycofeast acquired New Zealand dairy protein startup Daisy Lab for an undisclosed sum in October 2026. The buyout secures Daisy Lab’s precision fermentation platform.

The deal transfers Daisy Lab’s Auckland operations and patent pipeline to the UK group. Daisy Lab’s scientific team will stay intact.

Daisy Lab uses genetically engineered yeast to produce animal-free dairy proteins, including whey, casein, beta-lactoglobulin and lactoferrin. The company estimates its system cuts greenhouse gas emissions by up to 97 per cent compared with conventional dairy farming. Its most advanced project centres on high-yielding bovine and human lactoferrin. The iron-binding glycoprotein is used in infant nutrition, immune supplements and pharmaceuticals.

Integration without cuts

All laboratory staff and founders will keep their Auckland positions. Co-founders Irina Miller, Nikki Freed and Emily McIsaac will take broader operational roles across the Mycofeast organisation.

Development work from the New Zealand team will link with Evolutia Bio, Mycofeast’s research arm in California. The team will also draw on the parent firm’s industrial processing plants. Daisy Lab had initially engaged Mycofeast as an ingredient customer and commercial partner before talks became a full buyout.

“There are no layoffs associated with the acquisition. Mycofeast wanted both the technology and people,” Daisy Lab co-founder and CEO Irina Miller said.

Fermentation economics in focus

Extracting traditional lactoferrin requires thousands of litres of bovine milk to yield a single kilogram of purified protein. That scarcity keeps market prices between $600 and $2,000 per kilogram. It is one of the most expensive dairy fractions on global commodity markets.

Precision fermentation bypasses cows entirely by brewing identical proteins inside stainless-steel bioreactors. For ingredient buyers across Asia, synthetic biology offers stable pricing. It also removes exposure to seasonal milk collection swings, farm runoff rules and herd disease risks.

Capital pressure across alternative protein

Australasian food-tech startups are turning to offshore trade sales over standalone venture capital rounds. Higher interest rates and tighter funding over the past two years made building private pilot and commercial processing facilities prohibitively expensive for early-stage laboratories.

Selling to an established biotech operator gives Daisy Lab immediate industrial hardware without raising dilutive scale-up equity. The deal also hands Mycofeast a research base in New Zealand. That puts the British group inside a major agricultural exporter currently overhauling its biotech regulations.

Next steps for scale

Daisy Lab incorporated in Auckland in 2021 to engineer alternative proteins for New Zealand’s dairy-heavy economy. The startup focused on high-margin proteins rather than commodity milk powder. It established high-titre yeast strains to prove commercial viability before pursuing international manufacturing partners.

Teams across both companies are now preparing lactoferrin samples for regulatory clearance dossiers and commercial customer trials across North America and the Asia-Pacific region.