There’s big money in manuka honey

Manuka plantations could be a viable money earner for marginal Waikato hill country, Gerald Piddock reports.

Backers of a trial involving high performance manuka trees hope it will provide a credible land use alternative for farmers on marginal hill country land.

The project aims to improve yields, output and value of manuka honey and grow exports of the product to $1 billion by 2028.

The project’s co-investors include Comvita, Taihape beekeeper Don Tweeddale, Landcorp, Hawke’s Bay Regional Council, Aborex Industries, Nukuhau Carbon Ltd and Maori Trustee Te Tumu Paeroa.

It is being run on 11 commercial sites on 470ha around the North Island including north western Waikato sheep, beef and dairy farm Limestone Downs.

The C. Alma Baker Trust, who own the property have contributed $32,000 towards the trials and it also receives funding from the Government’s Primary Growth Partnership programme.

Comvita’s plantation manager John Burke outlined the project at Limestone Downs’ recent annual field day.

‘‘The deliverables for land owners is to prove the financial business case for manuka plantations as a viable alternative land use on marginal land. We’re talking mainly highly erodible low carrying capacity country. We’re also looking at riparian strips as well.’’

It would also see the development of tools to assist land owners to assist with manuka establishment and best practice in growing the trees, he said.

Comvita senior research manager Jonathan Stephens said a range of different manuka cultivars were being tested growth rates, disease Comvita hives similar to these near the Whanganui River will be used to harvest manuka honey from a plantation at Limestone Downs from 2017. resistance, flowering ability and their dihydroxyacetone (DHA) level in nectar on each site around the country.

DHA is the chemical that produced the unique manuka factor (UMF) in the honey. UMF contained antioxidants and inflammatory enzymes, he said.

‘‘It is the UMF value in the honey that drives the value in the international market. We breed the manuka to elevate the dihydroxyacetone in the nectar. The higher the dihydroxyacetone in the nectar, the more value to the honey at the end of the day.’’

Bees harvest nectar from other sources other than manuka and one of the goals using plantations was to have so much manuka flower that the bees locked on to that source.

‘‘If the floral source is still producing a good nectar flow, the bees will stay on the nectar.’’

But in reality, there was currently not enough manuka on the current sources for that to happen, Stephens said.

As the manuka trees grew, the level of DHA lifted and the bees worked the trees more. It meant purer and high dollar valued honey. Tests on the honey produced in the season just finished showed a steady increase in purity and dihydroxyacetone. It equated to about a UMF level of 15.

‘‘There’s a good market in Asia for UMF 15.’’

Limestone Downs have converted 32ha into a manuka block and planted 17,800 seedlings in August that will grow into naturally occurring high UMF value trees. The cultivars were selected for their flowering times and their environmental attributes.

Burke said Comvita were offering the high performance seedlings at 45 cents a plant, and the farmer agreed to harvest the honey for 10 years and to collect the data, which was as valuable as the honey, Burke said.

In return, the farmer received a 30 per cent share in the apiary revenue generated. Burke said this data would hopefully prove the business case for farmers to grow the trees as a land use alternative.

Typically, a beekeeper could harvest 20kg a hive. At a conservative $15/kg, the beekeeper would get $300 a hive, he said.

‘‘If he is sharing 15 per cent, you get $45/ha for your manuka.’’

Comvita hoped to get a substantial increase in yield and UMF of 30-40kg/hive/ha ranging from $20-$30/kg.

Local beekeeper Ross Apiary had been contracted to collect the honey.

Burke expected the first crop to arrive in 2017, for it to start to peak in 2020 and were budgeting on a 25-year plantation life. But that would depend on whether other native species are introduced to fully establish a forest.

If the landowner was receiving 30 per cent of the revenue, they would be looking at a range of $200-$380/ha once the plantation matured.

‘‘That’s pretty damn good returns,’’ he said.

It was also very competitive for other land uses. Farm profit before tax on a class three hard hill country in the northern North Island, which includes Waikato, is forecasted to be $155.51 a hectare for this season, according to data from New Zealand Beef+Lamb.

There were however, establishment costs of between $2000-$2500 a hectare. The landowner was also eligible for carbon credits at $6 a tonne.’

The minimum size land area a farmer could invest in to plant manuka is 20ha, which equated to 30 hives.