UMF Mānuka Honey: Made in Japan

The Unique Mānuka Factor (UMF) brand has been synonymous with authentic mānuka honey since its inception in 1998 and an important part of that understanding is, product which displays the brand must – almost always – be packed in New Zealand. A recent misstep from a UMF Honey Association (UMFHA) member which allowed Japanese filling of honey bags brings the Association’s rules under scrutiny, at a time when UMF has very real potential to become the industry-wide mānuka honey standard.

By Bruce Roscoe & Patrick Dawkins.

A Japanese honey company has imported UMF mānuka honey in bulk and poured it into beverage bags for sale online.

The company, Hands Trading Co., Ltd of Osaka processed the bulk mānuka honey, which it imported from 100% Pure New Zealand Honey Ltd, at its Kishiwada factory in the Osaka Bay area. Hands Trading processed the honey into three products, all poured into food beverage bags－creamed UMF10+ in the 120g size and liquid UMF10+ in the 120g and 300g sizes.

The webstore graphic used by Hands Trading Co., Ltd of Japan to introduce the three UMF10+ products it packs at its factory in Osaka from bulk mānuka honey imported from 100% Pure New Zealand Honey Ltd. Source: Rakuten.

The offshore packing of mānuka honey bearing the UMF logo of UMFHA appears to violate a longstanding association rule that UMF-labelled mānuka honey can be packed only in New Zealand. UMFHA makes exceptions to this rule for products that use UMF mānuka honey as an ingredient such as cosmetics or nutraceuticals where it can be shown that New Zealand lacks the capability for their manufacture or labelling.

Chief executive of 100% Pure New Zealand honey, Sean Goodwin admits he made a mistake in allowing the offshore packaging to take place, but that to his understanding the type of packaging is not available in New Zealand. He admits they should have sought approval from UMFHA though.

“The mistake I made was, I should have talked to Tony first up,” Goodwin says, referring to UMFHA chief executive Tony Wright.

Production of the "Poured in Japan" UMF product began in late April, a Hands Trading spokesperson confirmed. The Kishiwada factory, which also processes a range of honeys imported in bulk from Australia, was custom built for honey storage and processing and completed in September 2023.

None of this bulk trade or Japan value-added processing is guarded as secret. Rather Hands Trading, under the corporate slogan "Better life, better self!", reveals the details in graphic images on its own, Amazon Japan, Rakuten, and Yahoo Shopping webstores.

"Visitors to our factory from 100% Pure New Zealand Honey gave us their taikoban (stamp of approval)!" says text printed over a photo of the delegation posed smiling in front of the factory.

The text over the photo reads: Collaboration across the seas. A new Mānuka honey made possible by Hands, the official distributor of Honey Valley mānuka honey. Representatives from 100% Pure New Zealand Honey visited our Kishiwada factory. We received their stamp of approval for our production of Honey Valley brand honey, latest filling equipment, low-temperature warehouse, and the technology we developed for our NaTruly honey products.

The lead graphic for the beverage-bag UMF mānuka declares:

"Affordable liquid type / New release of mānuka honey UMF10+ / Filled in Japan / UMF certified mānuka honey / New type / New Size / Honey Valley & NaTruly.”

There is a longstanding relationship between 100% Pure New Zealand Honey and Hands Trading Co, with Goodwin saying they have been supplying the Japanese company with UMF branded mānuka honey for more than 15 years and that they are a trusted customer. Up until a request earlier this year, all honey had been packed in New Zealand.

“Earlier this year, they opened a new facility to help manage their honey, which includes types from various countries. They identified an opportunity to sell small pouches of various honeys, as starter packs to entice new consumers. They asked about the opportunity to pack a small amount of mānuka honey in these packs, to sit alongside other honey types,” Goodwin explains.

In the Long Shadow of Australia

Where the honey sits, in online trading stores, provides further context to how the breach of UMF rules has come about.

Hands Trading markets the three UMF10+ products jointly under its "NaTruly" (Natural x True) brand and the "Honey Valley" UMF brand of 100% Pure New Zealand Honey Ltd. E-commerce platforms Amazon Japan, Rakuten, Yahoo Shopping and Hands Trading's webstore are the retail outlets. Any belief, however, that this marketing and sales activity focuses on New Zealand mānuka honey is mistaken.

A Honey Valley 120g bag of mānuka honey bearing the UMF brand – packed offshore in breach of UMFHA rules. 100% Pure New Zealand Honey chief executive Sean Goodwin says Hands Trading Co has been told to remove the logo.

The three UMF products are a minority component of a 12-product suite. Eight of the remaining nine products are Australian origin and packed in the same-size beverage bags, and six of those are antibacterials that clash with New Zealand mānuka－"Premium Mānuka Honey MGO30+" (liquid type), "High Active Jarrah Honey TA25+", "Premium Active Jarrah Honey TA35+", "Wild Bush Honey TA5+", "Eucalyptus Honey TA10+", "Premium Active Marri (redgum) Honey TA35+", "Mānuka Blend" (a mix of the mānuka MGO30+ product and the wild bush TA5+ product), and "Leatherwood Honey". German "Natural Black Forest Honey" completes the suite.

Reinforcing the minority status of the three UMF offerings is the NaTruly gift set that selects five Australian origin honeys.

Moreover, New Zealand mānuka honey is leveraged in webstore product descriptions to give equal billing to Australian antibacterials － "The power and deliciousness of Premium Active Jarrah Honey TA35+ is on a par with mānuka honey"; Premium Active Marri (redgum) Honey TA35+ is a "substitute for mānuka honey"; "Eucalyptus Honey TA10+ is in the same plant family (Myrtaceae) as mānuka".

How to explain TA35+, MGO30+, and UMF10+? All three rating systems appear in Hands Trading's antibacterial honey lineup. The company knows better than to test the attention span of online shoppers with terms such as peroxide activity, catalase, non-peroxide activity, dihydroxyacetone, methylglyoxal, leptosperin, and hydroxymethylfurfural. Or wade in other pseudo-scientific swamp. So, keeps it simple. High numbers win: TA35+ is "the world's highest level"　of antibacterial strength.

The 10 in "UMF10+" as the lowest of the three values requires a different selling point. Hands Trading invokes Wellington: "UMF is the first official New Zealand government grading system to guarantee the purity and quality of Mānuka honey". And cites scarcity: "New Zealand produces only 1,700 tonnes of genuine Mānuka each year". (StatsNZ data record monofloral mānuka honey exports of 6,363.3 tonnes－the combined total for retail pack and bulk－for calendar 2023.)

For its MGO30+ Australian mānuka honey Hands Trading references First Nations people: "Mānuka...has been treasured as a sacred tree by Aboriginal people since ancient times". (No mention can be found of Māori language or heritage in any product description.) And repeats the boast that the company "...overturned the image of mānuka honey by producing a liquid type".

Rating System Failure

100% Pure New Zealand Honey is a staunch believer in, and supporter of, the UMF brand – and long has been – Goodwin says, and that it was a desire to do-right by UMF and simplify a confused market place that led to the misstep of allowing use of the UMF brand to offshore-packed honey.

“I said to them, ‘we want it to be UMF’. It is already a confusing enough market and when you go and put MGO on one Honey Valley product alongside another UMF Honey Valley product, I don’t like it … The alternative would have been to use an MGO rating. However, I felt that was not appropriate and itself would be a breach of our UMF licence agreement, by promoting an alternative rating system under the same brand,” Goodwin says.

A Question of Assurance

But can the UMFHA assurance of purity and quality attach to UMF10+ products processed from imported bulk and poured into bags at the Kishiwada factory in Osaka? After all, mānuka honey is thixotropic or gel-like. Yet Hands Trading is retailing it in a liquid state.

“We are confident that the finished product being sold under our brand is authentic, based on the 15-year relationship we have with this customer and their business integrity,” Goodwin says.

Hands Trading online store graphic describes UMF as a "quality assurance system approved by the New Zealand government". Source: Yahoo Shopping Japan.

“We supplied UMF-tested honey and they have used that batch to provide assurances to their consumers. Over many years, this customer has invested in building a positive reputation for quality and authenticity.”

What assurance does the UMFHA have that the Honey Valley UMF bags meet the standards required to carry their mark? Their chief executive was not willing to answer questions specific to the 100% Pure New Zealand Honey/Hands Trading Co arrangement.

“Sean and I have had a chat about it and have come to an agreed resolution on it,” was all Wright was willing to say.

Regarding offshore packing of UMF branded honey, Wright says it is “not something we readily endorse”.

“There have been products, it is not so much normal honey, but when the honey is being used as an ingredient in something else. That is when the technology or processing capability doesn’t exist in New Zealand to get the honey into the final product it needs to be. So, we have had a few cases where we have said ‘yeh, OK, that makes sense’, and the operators at the other end we have had confidence in. The instances I am aware of and have had involvement in, they are not processing any other types of honey, or they have had really good segregation systems which gives confidence it is not going to get mixed up with something else. The capability is there, it is a tiny part of what gets endorsed by UMF though.”

The UMFHA chief executive says he is not aware of any previous breaches to the offshore packing rules, such as 100% Pure New Zealand Honey have made.

Goodwin says they have told Hands Trading Co to remove UMF branding from the Japan-packed product.

UMF mānuka honey that is jarred in New Zealand for export is double-tested to assure it is true to the UMF value printed on the label and meets the relevant mānuka honey scientific definition operated by the Ministry for Primary Industries. Samples from the drum are first tested and those tests are repeated for samples from the jarred product. UMFHA issues a certificate to the licensee upon satisfactory completion of the second set of tests.

It seems unlikely that the second set of tests, which most protect consumers as it is the final product rather than the raw material that is tested, can be conducted outside New Zealand. The question becomes, how can UMFHA, which says its grading system "assures purity and quality", certify the UMF10+ product poured in Osaka?

Note: Honey Valley originally was a brand of Honey Valley New Zealand Ltd, one of the eight Stephen Lyttle / Carolyn Ball honey companies that were amalgamated into NZ Mānuka 2022 Ltd in 2022 which ultimately is majority owned by Perry Group Ltd of Hamilton. 100% Pure Zealand Honey Ltd was among those eight companies.

Bruce Roscoe is a writer and former director of research for Deutsche Bank Securities Japan. He also consults to honey traders, some of whom from time to time may compete with 100% Pure Zealand Honey Ltd.