Growing demand for Southland humate

A dietary health supplement with its key element sourced from land in Southland is being sold into the United States and China.

New Zealand Fulvic makes the liquid supplement at its plant at Kawerau, Bay of Plenty.

Fulvic acid is extracted from crushed lignite, known as humate, a pure form of organic matter. The humate is sent in 20 tonne containers to Kawerau from Kapuka business, Southern Humates, near Invercargill.

Southern Humates’s owner, Malcolm Sinclair, was unsure of the number of containers he had sent but it wasn’t a lot. He operates the business on four hectares that is also the site of an open-cast lignite mine.

Humate is full of nutrients. The supplement made from it supports a healthy immune system.

‘‘It helps your guts . . . it feeds the good bacteria [in the stomach],’’ Sinclair said.

NZ Fulvic owner Rhys Brooking said the supplement had been sold nationally for two years following two years of testing, familiarisation of regulations and devising a marketing strategy.

Brooking reckoned 60,000 bottles of the supplement had been sold.

‘‘It’s an emerging business . . . we’re just broken into the US and now going into China. We’re negotiating to go into France.’’

After the supplement’s manufacturing process is completed, the byproduct is bought back by Sinclair and sold to farm fertiliser companies and some farmers.

‘‘[As well as its nutrient value] the humate attach to molecules of the fertiliser and gets into the plant,’’ Sinclair said.

Sinclair said he sold humate to about 18 fertiliser companies in the country, including 10 in the North Island.

Top operate, Southern Humates gained mining consent from the Mines Department in Wellington and resource consent from the Southland District Council. Sinclair’s brother, Ian, is a qualified mine manager.

Malcolm Sinclair bought the mine 12 years ago to sell lignite to residents of south Invercargill and Bluff. He discontinued the service to sell humate since 2016.

‘‘It helps your guts ...it feeds the good bacteria.’’ Malcolm Sinclair

JOHN HAWKINS/STUFF Malcolm Sinclair checks a handful of humate (crushed lignite) at his business, Southern Humates, at Kapuka.