Manuka Seminar in Napier A Success

An enthusiastic crowd of 280 people filled Napier’s War Memorial Centre last week on 6 May for the seminar about mānuka on marginal land.

Following a similar seminar in Masterton last year, Hawke’s Bay Regional Council and Woodnet organised a broader focused seminar to encourage local landowners to consider mānuka (Leptospermum scoparium) as an economic crop for biomedical and food uses.

Hawke’s Bay Regional Council has a 130ha plantation of high Unique Manuka Factor (UMF) trees at Tūtira Regional Park, in a ‘primary growth partnership’ trial.

“The huge demand for mānuka world-wide is increasing all the time, but it is a limited supply and is only coming from NZ. The seminar covered the range of topics and interests so that attendees could connect the dots between their part in the industry and the bigger global picture,” says Brendan Powell, HBRC catchment management team leader, who helped to coordinate the seminar in Napier.

The response to the seminar was very positive with participants reporting that they felt that all their questions were answered. Attending were foresters, beekeepers, landowners, iwi, scientists, nurseries and tree breeders as well as regional councils and Ministry of Primary Industry staff. People came from as far as the West Coast, Northland and Australia.

Speakers covered the wide range of topics from establishing plantations, through to beekeeping and managing demand for hives, to the stages of marketing of honey for food and medicinal value.

Stuart Orme, Woodnet’s forestry consultant, opened the seminar by explaining that land that is uneconomic for other uses or has reverted to mānuka scrub now can be considered to have a potential economic use and value for landowners. The economics and return varies for each site.

Professor Peter Molan is an internationally acclaimed expert on the antibacterial properties and medical uses of honey. He said that the medicinal uses of UMF mānuka is well recognised internationally and the higher medical grade honey is the most valuable. The price depends on the purity of mānuka and whether it is mainly mānuka or mixed with kanuka (Kunzea ericoides) or other types of honey. The projections are for excellent financial returns but there’s a lot that has to happen to realise this potential.

Dr Linda Newstrom-Lloyd is specialist in pollination ecology and honey bee nutrition. She is involved in the national Trees for Bees project which aims to discover the most useful plants and trees that can provide food for bees right through their productive season. She spoke about the overstocking of bees being a critical issue for the industry as there may not be enough pollen to feed them.

She said that while mānuka may be the main focus for landowners, they need to plan for the rest of the year.
Dr Newstrom-Lloyd recommends resident hives as the most sensible option for landowners who can match hive numbers to available mānuka, and can keep bees healthy by planting other pollen sources. Pollen is needed as the protein source early in the season to grow new bees and feed the brood of young bees, whereas nectar is what gets turned into honey, and is used for maintenance. Dr Newstrom-Lloyd listed some of the trees that can be planted to provide food for bees throughout the year.

Lucy Griffiths spoke about her experience over seven years with her company Innov8 Aotearoa marketing mānuka overseas, and the demands of the international market. “You add value to the product through the story you tell,” she said. She would like to see a national standard and labelling regime but recognises a lot of work is required to get there.

Tiaki Hunia, Deputy Māori Trustee for Te Tumu Paeroa talked about opportunity for iwi, particularly on Māori owned marginal land. For years the land has been cleared for other activity and now the value of mānuka scrub is being recognised with the opportunity in international markets.

Comvita NZ staff explained that not all mānuka is equal. The PGP programme takes plants from around country with high UMF and planted these elsewhere to determine the varietals that will produce the high UMF no matter where these are established.

In the afternoon of the seminar, over 100 participants travelled to Tūtira Regional Park where Hawke’s Bay Regional Council staff discussed the successful planting of high UMF mānuka on the 130ha trial site over the last 3 years.
Brendan Powell (HBRC) says that mānuka can be hard to establish but at Tūtira it has grown well.

“We have three different varietals or ‘provenances’ of high UMF plants from different parts of NZ. The establishment of the mānuka trial fits in with our use of the regional park at Tūtira as a publicly accessible demonstration of sustainable land management on steep land. Mānuka is being looked at as a way to reduce sediment loss into the lake. Landowners and beekeepers are welcome to learn from our experience.”

ENDS

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