In my case - personal communication from someone who would know, with specific examples of products they're white-labelling. That doesn't mean every single MJ product is a straight white-label, but the vast majority of their stuff is. The fact that in most cases you can identify which one it is, also suggests that they are taking the easy route of repacking rather than the complicated route of 1+ year of science and trials before coming up with something that brews just the same as an existing dry yeast.
I've not listened to all of it, but I certainly wouldn't say he's lying. But if you listen to the detail, I think what he's saying is compatible with the idea that they started off just white-labelling, and are now big enough to start being a bit more creative in terms of novel blends of existing products, whilst leaving the difficult stuff of whole new strains to the experts. That's fair enough. For instance, at 41:05m he talks about how they get dry yeast companies to "do a lot of the biological work for us..and propagation" and at 45:25 "there are other yeast strains that are out on the market...that are really popular and we do take those...and then try to figure out how we can maybe improve on it...and we might mix that with another culture of yeast". So that appears to be an admission of taking white-label yeasts and mixing them, which is something that's been suspected not proven.
Yes at 45:50m he talks about how "our scientists are doing research in the background, taking samples from environment...and how we can utilise those in the brewing process". That's not something you do for regular brewing yeast, which are the products of centuries of domestication in breweries. However, it is how "funnies" like
Lachancea (
Lallemand's "Philly Sour") and Yeast Bay's entire
Wild Capture range such as
Metschnikowia reukaufii came about. But MJ have no such product available for sale. So I imagine that though they like to big it up as it sounds cool, it's a pretty early-stage project at the moment, no doubt looking at home in NZ as fewer people have looked there and there's a good chance of something novel. If I had to bet, I'd guess they're looking in particular for something suitable for low-alcohol fermentations like
White Labs WLP618 Saccharomycodes ludwigii - I imagine there could be a good market for a dry version of something like that, given the growing interest in low-alcohol drinks.
You'll notice that when the host at 46:30 asks the question - "is there anything you guys have created that noone has anything like?" - he gets very evasive, "I'll get back to you", and then starts flanneling a bit about drift and changes over propagation and WLP001 vs 1056. Which suggests that they're maybe maintaining at least one lineage that's separate to what one thinks of as the "true" lineage - but that could be eg the Munton version of Nottingham versus the Lallemand one, their wine yeasts seem related to the Munton-Gervin range so there's some kind of relationship there. But basicly if they did have something genuinely unique, he would be shouting from the rooftops about it at around 47m and it's telling that he doesn't.
In terms of "innovation", I'd suggest something like M66 Hophead is about as adventurous as they go - it's a dry yeast designed for hoppy beers, that came out soon after Lallemand Verdant, a dry yeast intended for hoppy beers. If you look at the ingredient list on the label it includes "enzymes (pectinase and glucosidase)". That sounds rather like they're mixing Verdant with one of Lallemand's wine enzyme mixes like
Lallzyme Beta. It's not the most revolutionary thing to do - Lallemand themselves have recently released
Aromazyme, a glucosidase specifically aimed at brewers - but that's the kind of level of innovation that MJ are operating at.
And that's OK, it can often be a smart way to make money.