Westlake Innovation is a New Zealand–based consultancy supporting pet food and value-added meat businesses to move from concept through to compliant, scalable production.

The business was founded by Jonathan Cox, a product and process development specialist with more than 25 years’ experience across the food and pet food industries. His work focuses on the practical interface between formulation, processing capability, regulatory requirements, and commercial outcomes — where most product development challenges actually emerge.

Westlake Innovation supports organisations ranging from early-stage ventures through to established exporters and multinational manufacturers, providing independent technical guidance across the full development lifecycle.

Background

Jonathan began his career as a Process Engineer with Mars Incorporated, before moving into senior roles spanning product development, quality assurance, operations management, and research leadership. After returning to Christchurch, he joined Hellers as R&D and Quality Manager, working across a wide range of value-added meat categories and ready-to-eat products. He later moved to ANZCO Foods as Innovation Manager, where he established a dedicated Innovation Centre supporting product prototyping across food, pet food, and nutraceutical applications. During this time he also drove the establishment of a joint venture producing air-dried pet food in the South Island.

Jonathan subsequently became part of the founding management team for King Country Pet Food, supporting the development of a large-scale extruded dry pet food facility in New Zealand’s central North Island. This included work included product development, brand development and creation of an onsite Research & Development team.

Together, these roles provide uncommon experience across both value-added meat processing and pet food manufacturing systems — a combination that underpins much of Westlake Innovation’s work today.

Industry Connections

Westlake Innovation maintains strong working relationships across New Zealand’s food and pet food ecosystem, including processors, ingredient suppliers, universities, and research institutes. Jonathan is a past-President and Board Chair of the New Zealand Institute of Food Science & Technology and has been involved in running national and international conferences focused on driving collaboration between industry and academia.

These connections support effective collaboration where specialist capability is required and help ensure research activity translates into practical development outcomes.

Governance and Sector Contribution

Alongside consulting work, Jonathan also serves on several boards, including as Deputy Chair of the Southern Cochlear Implant Programme and Deputy Chair of Ferndale Te Ahu Specialist School. He is also a member of the advisory board for the Massey University Food Technology Program and regularly contributes guest lectures to university courses across New Zealand.