Australian honey producers act to protect local manuka industry

NEW ZEALAND can have the pavlova, Russell Crowe and Phar Lap, but not manuka honey, says a group of Australian honey producers.

Smoke and ire: Lindsay Bourke, tending his hives in Tasmania this week, is keen to protect the manuka name for Aussie beekeepers.

NEW ZEALAND can have the pavlova, Russell Crowe and Phar Lap, but not manuka honey, says a group of Australian honey producers who fear their trans-Tasman neighbours are moving to monopolise the billion dollar industry.

On Monday, Australian manuka honey producers and retailers met in Melbourne to establish an incorporated association to rival New Zealand’s Unique Manuka Factor honey association, and formulate a strategy to counter the Kiwis’ push to own the manuka honey name.

Australian Honey Bee Industry Council chairman Lindsay Bourke said 24 people from Australia’s manuka honey industry met to kick-start the Australian Manuka Honey Association and “protect the word manuka”.

“Everyone decided to get together, to form an association and do something about it, instead of watching and waiting,” Mr Bourke said.

For years New Zealand has run a successful “marketing campaign” that has promoted manuka as an “iconic New Zealand product”, he said.

“They’ve been broadcasting to the world ‘Only from NZ’, and they’re trying so hard to convince everyone it’s the only place it comes from that they’ve started to believe it themselves,” he said.

“So we’re going to protect the word manuka. We’re the only two countries that produce it and the whole world needs it, we can’t understand what our Kiwi friends are trying to do.”

Manuka honey is derived from the nectar of leptospermum scoparium trees, commonly known as manuka or tea-trees, which are native to the east coast of Australia and parts of New Zealand.

Mr Bourke said New Zealand’s claim to manuka was unfounded, considering 80 species of the tea-tree were native to Australia, while New Zealand had “just one”.

Earlier this year NZ’s UMF honey association sought to extend the country’s Geographic Indictors Act to ensure honey labelled as “manuka” and sold globally could only come from New Zealand.

In a newsletter circuited to members last month, the association said it intended to “get the rights to the term “manuka honey” and control who can use it ... “Think Champagne where only producers located in the historic lands of the Count of Champagne can call their sparking wine under that brand name.”

Director of Perth-based ManukaLife and likely board member of the soon-to-be incorporated Australian Manuka Honey Association, Paul Callander, said the industry group’s first task would be to ensure Australian manuka products could be sold “without restraint”.