WHAT YOU CAN DO WITH GINSENG

Ginseng is at its most flavourful when it's fresh. Glen sells freshly dug roots and leaves on his website, mostly to Asian customers in Auckland. There's also growing demand for the fresh product among Auckland's culinary community, and he regularly fulfils orders from restaurants wanting it for teas and soups.

He also sells it dried, his most popular product. The root is dug up, left for a week until it's 95% dry, then packaged and sold whole.

A small amount of ginseng is powdered and combined with either deer velvet or manuka honey to create lozenges.

Ever the product developer, Glen also pulls out a bottle of a golden liqueur with a large 13-year-old root floating in the middle.

“I am pretty sure this will cure everything,” he jokes. “Even Covid!”

However, the market for New Zealand-grown ginseng remains narrow for now.

KiwiSeng sells the majority of its products via its website to New Zealand consumers. The large China market is lucrative but remains closed to NZ until the Ministry for Primary Industries and its Chinese counterparts officially open up a trade channel. This process may take another year or two.

Korea is the second-largest market in the world, but exports face exorbitantly high tariffs.

Most of KiwiSeng's current exports are to a Hong Kong-based retail chain.