New Zealand Consortium to Boost Medicinal Honey Production

There’s Money in Manuka Honey, and Trial Aims to Greatly Increase It
sticKNZ, 4/19/2011

There’s plenty of research on why manuka honey’s so useful from a medical and human health point of view.

Equally we understand bees pretty well.

The missing part of the puzzle, ironically, particularly as it is a plant that’s indigenous to New Zealand is how to best grow the native.

But a newly formed consortium, the Manuka Research Partnership (NZ) Ltd., along with well-known honey marketer Comvita Ltd., aims to change that.

It has pooled together $850,000, and has obtained matched funding through MAF’s Primary Growth Partnership for a planned seven year trial to increase the reliability of supply and proportion of medical grade Manuka honey out of New Zealand.

Based on what might initially seem aspirational numbers, the consortium reckons it can produce 16 times the current quantity of manuka honey (and with it the Unique Manuka Factor = active ingredient methylglyoxal) to crack $1 billion a year in sales…