The coming together of Apiculture New Zealand (ApiNZ) and Unique Mānuka Factor Honey Association (UMFHA) was signalled in the New Zealand Honey Strategy 2024-2030 released early last year, and Mānuka Charitable Trust (MCT) was included in that foreshadowing as “kaitiaki” or “national guardian” for mānuka. So, what role have they been playing in the industry bodies’ restructuring?
The Manuka Charitable Trust and its operating arm, Te Pitau Ltd., might have been quiet of late as attempts to secure ‘Mānuka Honey’ trademarks go on the backburner, but they shape as having plenty to offer – and plenty to gain – should mānuka honey take a place within the Horticulture Export Authority (HEA). While the proposed New Zealand Honey Association would see those members who export honey (or at least monofloral mānuka honey) pay a levy from day one, a longer-term goal would be a mandatory, industry wide, levy through the HEA, and then a bespoke piece of legislation under the Commodities Levy Act.
If those levies were to get across the line, it would provide a more secure pathway to funding for MCT. A look to the recent past also confirms how much MCT has on the line as UMFHA looks to broaden its scope of operations, with the UMF group having provided $700,000 in funding to MCT’s operating arm, Te Pitau Ltd., over the past two financial years.
While MCT has been in “active” and “regular” discussions with ApiNZ and UMFHA, board chair Victor Goldsmith – who took over the role from Pita Tipene last year – says “the way they organise themselves is really up to them”.
With any inclusion in the HEA likely at least 18 months away, Goldsmith says the most important thing for them is they remain “at the table” for the discussions, but this is likely to take the form of a memorandum of understanding between MCT and the new association mooted by UMFHA.
“I know they are looking to establish an HEA, but that may take some time, and that is where the MCT will be positioning ourself. We don’t need to be involved intimately at this stage of their planning, but in terms of some of the collateral and assets we have – our science programme, our certification trademark programme – those are assets we can potentially transfer over to the Horticulture Export Authority in time. But, it will take some time. There is a change in legislation required. The industry will have to go through the vote for a levy,” Goldsmith forecasts.
Efforts to secure certification trademarks for use of the term ‘Mānuka Honey’, on behalf of New Zealanders, have been the domain of MCT in recent years. However, they have been unable to do so in any markets, including a loss on the home soil of New Zealand’s Intellectual Propety Office in 2023. A science programme, which received $4million taxpayer funding in 2019, has been operating, and its findings are the sort of thing they hope can add value to the honey industry, especially if mānuka honey takes a place in the HEA and a framework for greater export control is established. Goldsmith says it is a comprehensive programme, which includes research into honey adulteration prevention.
“The science programme includes a whole range of different things which leads to us being able to put our hands on our heart and say ‘that is mānuka honey, from New Zealand, not anywhere else, and this is the characteristics of it’,” he says.
Regardless of how the group representing UMF forms itself, or what it is called, the newly-appointed MCT chair says they are aware that in the immediate future it is the UMF licensees that will ultimately cast the vote on whether to continue to provide their funding into MCT’s legal work.
“There may come a time where they say, ‘hey we can’t continue to do this unless we see some contribution from iwi Māori’, but they haven’t asked for that yet. There is mutual respect so far, because we are doing what needs to be done.”
With the hope of mandatory levies to support the Trust’s work, they will continue to stay in contact, but leave the industry groups to the finer details of their constitutions.
“We are not concerned, as long as we continue to have the conversations which lead us towards a Honey Export Authority model,” Goldsmith says.
“We will dot the ‘i’s and cross the ‘t’s on that and work with government, and whoever else we need to, to get that over the line.”
