The Nelson-based industry has revolved around a stable group of 18 growers who had become price takers of a commodity market, prompting a rethink a few years ago to focus on unique varieties to offer to craft breweries looking for different flavours and aromas in their beers.
NZ produced a mere 1% of the world's hop crop, which it sold through the co-operatively-owned company, NZ Hops, but its varieties were now in demand and the $25 million industry here was on a roll enticing newcomers to make the significant capital investment needed to set up a hop garden.
NZ Hops chief executive Doug Donelan said several new growers had entered the industry, including a dairy farmer, a former Merino farmer and blackcurrant growers who were investing in the capital-intensive infrastructure of the pole structure for a garden, a kiln and mechanical pickers to strip the flowers from the vines.
On today's prices, they were likely to average $45,000/ha once their gardens were established and plants mature.
Nelson was the only region in the country that could grow the latitude-sensitive crop and fortunately had the right climate to grow it well.
Plants grown in Nelson didn't have the bugs and diseases battled by overseas hop growers and this year that enabled 90% of the NZ crop to be certified spray-free while nearly 21,000kg of that was certified organic.
In the next few years, expansion would take the tiny industry from 442ha to about 650ha, which would produce about 1200 tonnes of a range of varieties.
This year the industry harvested 760 tonnes, slightly down on the previous year because of a cooler summer and unrelenting winds, Donelan said.
An extremely wet spring was followed by a cool summer and cold westerly winds brought strong gusts that damaged plantings and reduced the overall crop.
It was followed by a baffling harvest for many growers because several varieties shifted their harvest window habits by holding on longer than usual. The end result was shortfalls in some varieties of the largely pre-sold crop.
About 95% of the crop was sold before harvest with a big chunk of it destined for the United States craft beer market and 20% to NZ brewers.
"The total beer volume around the world isn't growing but craft beer is taking a bigger segment.
“We're seeing major growth in small breweries in NZ and what is happening now in the US is brew pubs, where they are making beer and selling it at that outlet.
"It's great for us because they're looking for new hop varieties and not only do they use specialty hops but lots of them."
Craft beer was not just for the small breweries though, Donelan said.
Beer giants such as DB and Lion were producing their own brands to appeal to consumers moving away from traditional, cheaper beer.
Seventeen of the varieties grown in Nelson were unique to NZ while six were northern types and the combined mix enabled growers to spread the harvest over a longer period. Brewers needed alpha hops to provide the bittering agent in beer while aroma hops, which made up most of NZ's varieties, provided the individual characteristics of the brew.
Countries such as Germany continued to grow hop varieties for the commodity market because they had scale and could grow higher-yielding varieties for less. America had individual hop gardens that were bigger than the entire NZ crop.
So the tiny NZ industry relied on offering something different.
Donelan said research continued to be a major focus of the industry through its partnership with Plant and Food Research and developing unique hop varieties remained at the forefront of the programme.
Two promising new cultivars were in growing trials after being identified through brewing trials and if successful in the field would be added to the mix for growers.
Expansion of the Nelson crop from new entrants and existing growers prompted NZ Hops to expand its facilities at Appleby near Richmond where dried hops were processed into pellets or repackaged as whole hops.
In the past three years it had built more cool storage and Donelan said it would replicate that as well as more warehousing and distribution facilities.
