ANALYSIS:
It looks and tastes like a watery version of ZAP, the popular flavoured milk from the 1980s and 90s that some, including Food Bowl chief executive Grant Verry, remembers from his childhood.
"But this one's actually healthy," he said.
He was talking excitedly about the probiotic milky drink on every table at yesterday's business breakfast during Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern's visit to Singapore, where two memoranda of understanding were signed.
Nothing quite causes the eyes to glaze over as quickly as the acronym MoU, but it's the potential behind the letters that should be examined.
Plant-based beef jerky. Cultivated prawn dumplings. "New Zealand probiotics" in a milky drink.
That last one is more about marketing, but the gist is that innovative food is a huge global market where New Zealand's presence can and should be grown. That's the aim of the partnerships, signed yesterday, between NZ Trade and Enterprise and its Singapore equivalent, as well as between the Food Bowl and the Singapore Institute of Technology.
There is also a more general, grander goal, one that political leaders of every stripe pledge to achieve when in power, but which is much harder to do than just talk about - boosting productivity, which would improve wages, skills and livelihoods in what is, comparatively, New Zealand's low-wage, low-skills economy.
Singapore is the perfect collaborative partner for that, according to NZ Trade and Enterprise chief executive Peter Chrisp.
"A lot of multinationals come and locate their head offices here. They have a lot of venture capitalists, a lot of investment, a huge amount of start-ups created here," he says.
"When we're down in New Zealand at the edge of the world and trying to grow companies internationally, this is just a great place to bring companies and incubate them in this market.
"They can tap into skilled people, sources of funding, and if they do a deal with a multinational here, it can go out across the whole world."
The benefits are mutual. One such company in Singapore looking to take advantage is Shiok Meats, which produces meat by using stem cells.
"We can't just launch our products just in Singapore, a very small country with a small population," said co-founder Dr Sandhya Sriram.
"We do have to expand to other countries. We also need access to good quality animals, good quality research, infrastructure and, of course, the consumers. New Zealand has all of that."
It's also a production line that has a less impactful footprint.
"We take stem cells and we grow them in large stainless steel tanks, like a brewery, but instead of growing beer, it's growing meats and seafood inside, and we feed it with plant-based liquid nutrition - like a soup," she says.
"After four to six weeks you get real shrimp meat, but you don't get the whole animal. No shell, no legs, no head, no need to clean, no need to be shelled, nothing. What you get is 100 per cent meat.
"We don't have to rear shrimp. We don't have to slaughter them. We don't have to go in the oceans. We can grow this meat anywhere, in the world, any time. It's not seasonal. It's not affected by climate change. It's done in a food-safe manufacturing facility."
Her company has facilities in Australia and Thailand, and is eyeing New Zealand.
"I can reach out to the Singapore Institute of Technology and Enterprise Singapore and tell them, 'hey, we want to do something in New Zealand. How do we connect to the right people?' You also have a lot of good scientists, a lot of good universities. We want to make use of that as well."
It's this kind of innovation that underpins the high calibre productivity the Government wants to support.
"We get low productivity with big companies that are just competing on price alone, and you're not the lowest cost producer," says Chrisp.
"So when we try and compete like that around the world, it drives us towards low productivity. When you've got these innovation-intensive, knowledge-intensive companies based on science, chasing premium niches of consumers around the world, that's where you get high productivity."
Verry talks up a Kiwi company making plant-based beef jerky.
"Our up-and-coming geniuses, the brilliance of our innovation and number eight wire people, they need these market corridors to be open."
What does this have to do with Jacinda Ardern?
It's easy to dismiss these kinds of trips abroad as a bunch of talking and eating, and it's hard to see more than that in Ardern's own Instagram feed.
But a trade and business delegation led by the Prime Minister brings much more to the table than would otherwise be there, Chrisp says.
"We're a small country looking for presence in the world. We call it the peacock strategy. You got to fluff your feathers up to make yourself look a little bit bigger than you are.
"With the PM, it allows us to build a halo around these companies, a bigger presence on the market. The networking is better, the flow of ideas and investment and markets and consumers - they're all better when you can build a bigger presence. The Prime Minister really adds a lot of weight to that."
Then there's the networking factor with people who might not have shown up were it not for the presence of a Prime Minister.
"I was sitting down at dinner with someone from Temasek, one of the biggest innovative investment companies in the world - all informal chat, networking, building up that relationship," Chrisp says.
"He was telling me what they're thinking about plant protein - one of the most sophisticated investors in the world, talking to us about one of the biggest trends for our own country. You don't get this stuff from a Zoom call and formal meetings. The warmth of the relationships, you can't underestimate it."
So, would any Prime Minister do, or does Ardern bring something unique to the trip?
"She is perceived really well on the international stage," says Verry.
"It provides a real validity to what we're doing, and a real authenticity to what we're about."
Ardern's presence was certainly noted by Sriram, who openly talked about "fan-girling" in her speech to the breakfast, and then requested a selfie with Ardern.
This is obviously only one aspect of the trip, and not all businesses benefit equally. Another aspect is Ardern's meetings with country leaders, where more sensitive global matters are discussed, such as regional security.
This was brought into stark relief with Chinese state media reporting that the China-Solomons security pact has been signed, which has been described as potentially opening the door to Chinese military presence in the Pacific.
A small country like New Zealand has little in the way of persuasive powers, so Ardern repeating her concerns about the pact won't worry China much.
She can, though, talk to other leaders and help build a louder, unified voice about such concerns. Other nations also have more heft, such as Japan - where Ardern begins a two-day visit today.
It will be fresh ground for Ardern to navigate. She has a good rapport with her Singapore counterpart Lee Hsien Loong. But she is yet to talk to new Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.
'Champions of Change' lead vital conversations to prevent family harm.