Bee Business Booming

Bee Business Booming

“The two businesses have always worked hand-in-hand to take honey from hive to jar to market, but we decided it was time to unite them. It’s the same people, same product and same place, all under one name.” Darren Clifford, Taylor Pass Honey Co.

Marlborough’s biggest honey company has a new name, new look, and new factory site.

A merger of Apitech New Zealand and The Honey Company is a coming of age for Marlborough’s biggest honey producer, says Managing Director Darren Clifford.

The new Taylor Pass Honey Co. marries the beekeeping business, Apitech, with its production partner, to create one vertically integrated company.

“The two businesses have always worked hand-in-hand to take honey from hive to jar to market, but we decided it was time to unite them,” said Clifford. “It’s the same people, same product and same place, all under one name.”

The new company comes with new branding and a new factory on the corner of Blenheim’s Taylor Pass and Wither Roads, to complement the existing facility further down Taylor Pass Road.

“The beekeeping arm of the business will stay in the Taylor Pass countryside, but that factory simply isn’t large enough for the entire operation,” said Clifford.

“By the end of the year, we hope to have a new state-of-the-art factory operating on the Wither Rd site, for a packaging line, offices, honey shop and potentially a café.

The company has also purchased a warehouse for storage around the corner on Woodmor Rd.

The Taylor Pass Honey Co. facilities are to be adorned with new branding, designed to reflect the rugged landscapes of the South Island’s high country.

“Our hives sit on beautiful farms in the Awatere and Waihopai Valleys, in the Marlborough Sounds and at Nelson Lakes. They are iconic landscapes, and we wanted our brand to reflect the home of our hives and bees and honey,” said Clifford. “The colours emulate the golden hills of our high country and the flowers our bees feast on. They celebrate the landscapes that make Taylor Pass Honey Co. so unique.”

Taylor Pass Honey Co. exports nearly all its honey as branded product, with Asia a key market. Over the past five years, exports have grown at an average rate of 50 percent each year, making the new factory an essential move.

It will have capacity to process between 1000 and 1500 metric tonnes of honey each year, and the company has plans to grow to more than 8,000 hives over the 2016/2017 season.

“We’re working with some great landowners in some amazingly remote corners of Marlborough,” said Clifford. “Each place has its own unique characteristics, and we can’t wait to see and taste the honey off them.”

Taylor Pass Honey Co. employs more than 30 full-time workers, and up to 20 seasonal workers in peak times. Both are expected to increase year-on-year as the company expands.

Training is a major focus, said Clifford. “We are dedicated as a company to training beekeepers, and that means we are taking on a number of apprentices every year.”

Two apprentices trained during the 2015/16 season will be fully qualified apiarists by the end of the 2017/18 season, he said. “They spend their days in some of the most beautiful corners of the country, nurturing bees and collecting a pretty amazing natural product. I reckon it’s one of the best jobs in the world.”

Taylor Pass Honey Co. produces 10 different types of honey, and the new branding uses colour codes to differentiate each, so that the Blue Borage sits on a sky-blue label, and the Wild Flower on lilac.

“Traditionally you would know what you were buying just at a glance, and we are trying to go back to the old way of colour identification,” said Clifford. “Our colours are in muted tones, to reflect rugged South Island landscapes.”

The newly branded trucks will be on display at the Crusaders-Highlanders game at Lansdowne Park on February 19, when the Taylor Pass Honey Co. has an open day and launch event, said Clifford. “We thought that was a pretty good way to kick it all off.”

Photo: Kelvin Deaker (Left) CFO & Darren Clifford (Right) Managing Director for Taylor Pass Honey Co.

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