Lacto Japan invests in Leaft Foods to open Japan Rubisco market

A Tokyo-based ingredients trader is moving Rubisco out of the lab-orbit and into a market plan for Japan. Lacto Japan invested in Leaft Foods on June 4 and said the deal is designed to establish a production and sales framework for Rubisco Protein in Japan, with only a minor expected impact on consolidated results for the fiscal year ending November 2026.

That matters because Japan is not just another sales destination. It is a market where ingredient quality, texture, flavor and supply reliability can decide whether a novel protein gets trialed, reformulated or dropped. By pairing Leaft’s extraction technology with Lacto Japan’s trading-house reach, the companies are betting that Rubisco can clear the practical hurdles that turn an interesting protein into a stocked ingredient: customer access, manufacturing scale-up and the commercial relationships needed to move through Japan’s food system.

Leaft Foods, founded in April 2019 and based in Rolleston, New Zealand, has built its pitch around protein pulled directly from green leaves. The company says its Rubisco product has a complete essential amino acid profile and rapid digestion. Its consumer brand, Leaft Blade, is a ready-to-drink functional beverage for athletes and health-conscious consumers, with 18 grams of leaf Rubisco protein and 6 milligrams of iron per serving. Lacto Japan said both Rubisco Protein Isolate and Leaft Blade are manufactured at Leaft’s commercial facility in Canterbury, reinforcing that the Japanese push is tied to real production, not a concept stage promise.

The relationship between the two companies predates the investment. Lacto Japan said the stake builds on a partnership established in 2025, when the companies announced a strategic collaboration to accelerate commercialization in Japan’s food manufacturing sector. In that earlier announcement, Lacto Japan general manager for Oceania Takeshi Shimizu said the quality, texture and flavor of foods made with Leaft’s system met the standards Japanese consumers expect. That kind of validation is central in Japan, where formulation performance can matter as much as nutrition claims.

Leaft has also been building the broader platform behind the protein. Callaghan Innovation said the company’s system also produces animal feed optimized for ruminant nutrition, helping lower nitrogen losses and greenhouse-gas emissions on farm. Leaft raised $15 million in Series A funding in 2022 from backers including Khosla Ventures, Ngāi Tahu, the Climate Change Impact Fund and Steven Adams. More recently, reports said it operated a 30,000-square-foot commercial demonstration facility in Canterbury producing about a tonne of Leaf Rubisco products per week, and expanded into pet nutrition in 2025 with Alfalfa Protein Concentrate and a U.S. distribution partnership.

For Lacto Japan, the investment is a market-entry tool as much as a balance-sheet event. For Leaft, it is a shortcut into a protein-importing market where local distribution muscle, formulation credibility and commercial follow-through can matter more than the novelty of the protein itself.