Canterbury-based Airborne Honey, which claims to be the country’s oldest honey company, says manuka honey exporters are bidding up the price of mono-floral and bush honeys to blend with manuka honey to make up a shortfall in production to meet voracious overseas demand.
The pressure on supply has forced the domestic spot supply price of everyday clover honey up from $9 a kilogram in October 2015 to $11/kg in January 2016 to $14/kg in March 2016. The spot price for thyme honey has increased from $6/kg to $12/kg and honeydew has gone from $6/kg to $10.50/kg.
For consumers this means they can expect to pay around $15 for a 500 gram jar of clover honey at retail, up from around $10 six months ago, Airborne says.
“We want to provide reasonably priced, quality table honeys to retailers, but the manuka honey exporters are putting the squeeze on mono-floral and bush honey which they need in volume to make blended manuka honey that can, under the current government guidelines, be sold as real manuka honey,” John Smart, Airborne Honey sales and marketing manager, said in a statement.
He said Airborne was a staunch critic of the manuka honey “gold rush mentality” that has gripped the industry as well as the delay in defining robust standards for the variety. The popularity of honey sourced from the manuka tree, which is prized for its health benefits, has meant it commands “enormous prices” overseas.
The value of honey exports jumped to $285 million in 2015 from $202m in 2014 and just $36m a decade ago. A government and industry primary growth partnership aims to increase the annual value of New Zealand’s manuka honey industry to $1.2 billion by 2028.
Production, however, continues to lag behind demand, hence the need to sell blended manuka honey as manuka honey, Smart said.
“The Ministry of Primary Industries (MPI) has unwittingly sanctioned the creation of a significant honey-blending industry whose sole purpose is buying individual mono-floral honey varieties from all over NZ and blending them in line with the current MPI Manuka Guidelines,” Smart said.
“It’s a business model that defrauds customers and in no way reflects the international CODEX standards for mono-floral honey we are supposedly moving towards.” CODEX requires a honey to be “wholly or mainly” made from the named source on the label, he said.
Allowing blended manuka honey, made from other varieties like clover, thyme, rewarewa, honeydew and bush honey to be verified by AsureQuality and validated by government as certified manuka honey brings NZ’s reputation as a premium quality food producing country into disrepute, Smart said.
He said Airborne Honey has built its reputation as a world-leading honey brand by selling true to variety mono-floral honey and uses a proprietary quality assurance system, TraceMe, to provide the authentication to consumers that what is printed on the label is what is in the jar. Airborne also complies with the internationally recognised CODEX honey standards.
