\u201cHives were at half a million in 2014. They\u2019re back at half a million now, having peaked at a million. That means we are probably at a more sustainable level … a point where the amount we produce on an annual basis is around what we would be selling.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we\u2019ve worked through a large portion of the surplus of aged honey that had been sitting with us since the 2019 record season and caused prices to drop.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s also meant there\u2019s some pretty aggressive pricing out in the market, which will start to change as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Total New Zealand honey exports earned US$243m (S409m) last year, 26% down on 2020, according to Corolis Research. Honey production fell 56% between 2020 and 2023.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the sentiment is we\u2019ve come through it,\u201d says Goodwin.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got the right structure in terms of hives and I think there will start to be some upward movement in honey pricing.<\/p>\n
\u201cMarkets themselves are not too bad \u2026 there\u2019s a bit of uncertainty around tariffs because the US is the largest m\u0101nuka honey market.\u201d<\/p>\n
Goodwin says while the new 15% US tariff on New Zealand is \u201canother shock\u201d for business, the health properties of m\u0101nuka honey are unique to New Zealand, so it\u2019s not competing against other countries\u2019 products. Australia has some m\u0101nuka bush, although not the swathes available to bees in New Zealand.<\/p>\n
The real potential impact of the tariffs is that consumer demand will reduce if the price goes up, he says.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, market prospects are looking up. European FTAs are starting to pay off and the sector\u2019s keen to tap the new trade deal with the Middle East.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we\u2019ll see benefits … the big one from my point of view is the potential of an FTA with India.<\/p>\n
\u201cI really think India has huge potential, possibly to be one of our top five markets. Honey has been a part of their culture for a long time. There\u2019s a big demographic of Indian consumers in New Zealand and in other parts of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
Goodwin says the Ministry for Primary Industries is doing \u201ca lot of good work\u201d with the India negotiations.<\/p>\n
As the world\u2019s fourth-largest producer of honey, India isn\u2019t likely to agree to a free trade deal on honey. But the ministry is understanding of the sector\u2019s urging to make it a special case.<\/p>\n
The industry itself is trying to learn from its gold rush mistakes when it had too many hives, too much stainless steel and wasn\u2019t properly focused on consumers and innovation, he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve come through 10 years of disruption and hopefully we\u2019re now in a more mature state.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cHives were at half a million in 2014. They\u2019re back at half a million now, having peaked at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":53234,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[95,682,1052,36086,28527,138,9084,45397,127,219,16118,2753,45395,18161,2740,3499,134,33213,14108,1019,45394,225,45393,27878,111,139,69,1118,13218,1597,4460,45396,26884,12975,4758,7677,13939,223,5662,7563,584,3040],"class_list":["post-53233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-and","tag-being","tag-benefits","tag-boardroom","tag-burned","tag-business","tag-challenges","tag-darling","tag-despite","tag-economy","tag-export","tag-eyes","tag-feted","tag-fever","tag-former","tag-growth","tag-health","tag-honey","tag-however","tag-international","tag-ironically","tag-market","tag-mnuka","tag-mood","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-pandemic","tag-patient","tag-product","tag-proven","tag-recovering","tag-sector","tag-taking","tag-tariffs","tag-temperature","tag-the","tag-think","tag-those","tag-trade","tag-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53233\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}