Meet the family that’s turning honey into gold
Saana Waitai-Murray used to trade honey for flour and gas. Now her granddaughter is exporting 50 tonnes every year. By Lee Umbers.
BLANCHE Murray’s introduction to the manuka honey industry was not without pain.
Moving hives at night with only a beekeeping half-suit, she bent over in front of a headlight in thin fleecy trousers – her backside becoming an illuminated target. She reckons she was stung around 80 times.
‘‘I jumped like a kangaroo,’’ she says.
The youngmumis a face of the manuka honey industry that is turning what was once considered wasteland into liquid gold and bringing jobs and prospects to Maori in areas including her own Far North community.
Blanche is the grand-daughter of revered Maori rights champion Saana Waitai Murray, who colodged the historic ‘‘flora and fauna’’ claim with the Waitangi Tribunal, wanting a bright future for whanau and whenua.
Saana told her the burgeoning industry was ‘‘a great opportunity for our whanau’’, says Blanche, 30, who gathered her sister and brothers together to launch Kai Ora Honey from the family home in Awanui three years ago.
Blanche says Saana told her they were ‘‘the kaitiaki (guardians) of the land where this high-active honey is produced’’.
‘‘She said, ‘let’s make sure our people are the ones who own and operate this particular industry up here in the Far North and employ our own. And make sure that our own are contributing positively to our society’.’’
Her grandmother, the eldest of 14 children, learned the demand for honey early in life. Saana was taught by her father as a teen how to smoke out wild bees from rock nests around their Spirits Bay farm to extract the sweet food to trade for flour, batteries and gasoline, Blanche says.
Her grandmother was also aware of the traditional use of the manuka plant for medicinal reasons. ‘‘She said when they were younger they used to eat the pod seeds of the manuka flower to help with upset stomachs.’’
The financial lead for Maori honey coalition Tika Miere, Blanche got her entrepreneurial streak from dad Rapine – the youngest of Saana’s 13 children.
The family was shattered when Rapine died in 2010 of a heart attack aged just 44, following a battle with kidney failure. Saana passed away a year later, at age 84.
The Ngati Kuri kuia was the last living claimant of the six iwi representatives who lodged Wai 262, aimed at securing recognition of rights around and control of traditional Maori knowledge, customs and relationships with the natural environment. Saana was described in a tribute as a ‘‘living taonga’’.
Guided by Saana’s vision, Blanche approached brothers Tae, who had returned from beekeeping around the country, and Walter, back from a rugby scholarship in the United States, to launch Kai Ora Honey.
And shortly afterwards, Blanche’s husband Liam and her brother Samson and younger sister Mabel joined Kai Ora Honey to further complement the family business.
For the first two months, they operated on a ‘‘very, very tight budget’’ but an early lifeline came via a Japanese business group, who had heard of her father’s death.
The group had spoken with Rapine about his interest in manuka honey and when they learned his children were launching their business, they placed an order.
‘‘They bought the honey upfront, and that’s what helped propel us forward,’’ Blanche says. ‘‘Then we had a cracker of a season and it just skyrocketed.’’
Kai Ora Honey is now exporting around 50 tonnes of honey annually to Japan, the UK, Hong Kong, Singapore and Kuwait. They are also developing a health food product for the international market. She expects the business to ‘‘easily’’ double last year’s turnover.
Kai Ora Honey produces some of this country’s highest active manuka honey, Blanche says. Overseas clients are also drawn to a whanau-owned business with generational links.
‘‘They love history, they love traditions, they love the (Maori) culture,’’ operations manager and head beekeeper Tae says. ‘‘And that us as a family, in general are always together.’’
From an initial 300 hives Kai Ora Honey now has around 2500, on sites from Spirits Bay to Kaipara Heads, and is set to add a chief operating officer and another beekeeper to its eight staff.
‘‘My passion is helping our rangatahi (youth) identify who they are, and where they could go,’’ says Blanche, who with Liam has one-year-old son Kiwa.
Kai Ora Honey is guided by Saana and Rapine’s principles, she says. ‘‘We are all about the positive impact we can have on our communities – socially, economically, environmentally and culturally.’’
Weekly business planning sessions were carried out around Mata’s kitchen table when Kai Ora Honey first launched. ‘‘Now we’ve got a flash new office, and a flash new table – that we still built ourselves,’’ Blanche says.
She is not measuring success in personal wealth, however.
‘‘Someone who has a great life, somebody who has a loving family, somebody who can go fishing on the weekends or drive up Ninety Mile Beach and pick pipis – that to me is rich, not assets and money.’’
We are all about the positive impact we can have on our communities – socially, economically, environmentally and culturally.’ BLANCHE MURRAY, ABOVE