KPMG Nature Positive Challenge winner say disrupters like Trump come and go

KPMG Nature Positive Challenge winner Tom Collier isn’t worried about the disruptive shift of Donald Trump’s environmental policies.

Levur chief operating officer Joanne Barber with company co-founder and chief executive Tom Collier.

Sydney scientist Tom Collier, the 2025 winner of the KPMG Nature Positive Challenge, says he is not worried about the shift on environmental policies in the US under President Donald Trump.

The co-founder of eco start-up Levur, which is working on the production of a sustainable alternative to palm oil, which is extensively used in food and cosmetics, says his focus is on producing a product which can help avoid the deforestation damage done by palm oil at a price which can be economically viable for companies which use it.

“The world will always have the next equivalent to Trump,” he said in an interview with The Australian on the eve of winning the $100,000 prize for eco starts-ups, selected from a list of more than 100 entries.

“I’m 31. My goal is to take advantage of the best parts of capitalism to make something which is good for the world, which goes beyond the four-year or eight-year political cycle.

“There are always the realities of funding and tariffs which will affect what investors seek in the future, but my job is to keep busy bringing this product forward.

“One of the main reasons I love what I do is that I am spending time making something that doesn’t cause harm and can provide an alternative for the big companies which use palm oil.”

The US is expected to swing away from former president Joe Biden’s environmental policies under Mr Trump, who has already indicated plans to pull America out of the Paris Agreement commitment to be carbon neutral by 2050 and to reduce environmental controls.

The idea of Mr Collier’s venture goes back 10 years, when he was studying his undergraduate degree in science, in synthetic biology at Macquarie University, when his then girlfriend returned from a trip to Borneo appalled at the deforestation of the jungle on the Indonesian island.

“I did my own research and realised that palm oil was a major cause of this,” he said.

“Palm oil is in 50 per cent of supermarket products and 70 per cent of cosmetics.

“I could see the damage its production was doing was likely to be four times as much by 2050 because of the growing demand for it. I set upon a very clear path of doing a master’s degree and a PhD to understand how to work with nature to produce alternatives to palm oil.”

Two years ago he founded Levur – based on the French word for yeast, levure – a start-up aiming to commercialise his idea of using yeast to manufacture a palm oil alternative. Mr Collier’s co-founder is Brisbane-based businesswoman Joanne Barber, who has a long history in nurturing new companies, particularly in the environmental sector.

The company is being supported by Main Sequence Ventures to develop palm oil products for the cosmetics industry where margins are higher.

Mr Collier has already had discussions with big food and cosmetic companies including US agribusiness giant Cargill, Procter & Gamble and cosmetics company L’Oreal.

“We are working with partnerships in nutraceuticals and cosmetics to work with their research and development partners,” he said. “We are also in the middle of closing a strategic partnership with a large Australian corporate which we will announce in a couple of weeks.”

Mr Collier said Levur was at a “pivotal moment”.

“Thanks to this prize, we’ll be able to scale faster and reach more markets, helping to commercialise our sustainable alternative to palm oil,” he said.

KPMG chief executive Andrew Yates said business in Australia was watching closely to see the policies of the new Trump administration. Mr Yates said it was clear the Trump administration would mean a “reduction in focus” on areas such as diversity, equity and inclusion as well as environmental policies.

Levur is also among five finalists which share another $250,000 of advisory services to help scale their businesses.

The others are Coral Maker, a Western Australia-based company focusing on the restoration of coral reefs; Lord of the Trees, a Sydney-based company pioneering sustainable pest management using drone technology; Native Botanical Brewery, based in Erina in NSW, a First Nations family business producing native beverages; and Rainstick, a company based in Cairns which uses electricity to mimic the natural effects of lightning to grow crops bigger, faster and more sustainably.

Originally published as KPMG Nature Positive Challenge winner say disrupters like Trump come and go