Bloomberg, Comvita JV with Chineese partner and Manuka skyrocketing!

China Is Coping With Pollution by Buying Fancy Honey

The country’s appetite for natural food has sent manuka honey sales skyrocketing.

Bruce Einhorn

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September 9, 2016 — 9:00 AM AEST
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Two jars of manuka honey sell for $127 on Alibaba’s Tmall.
Photograph: Andrew Musson for Bloomberg Businessweek
Comvita is one beneficiary of the growing appetite for all-natural foods. The company, the biggest honey brand in New Zealand, relies on Chinese consumers clamoring for manuka honey for about 60 percent of its sales. People in China have long eaten honey to improve digestion and bolster their immune systems. Touted as a superfood for its antibacterial qualities, manuka honey is made by bees that pollinate the Leptospermum scoparium, a plant native to New Zealand and Australia.
On Tmall, the online marketplace owned by Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba, two 250-gram jars of Comvita’s manuka honey sell for 849 yuan ($127), more than nine times the price of a similar amount of the company’s clover honey. The brand is popular in cities such as Beijing and Shanghai but hasn’t yet caught on in less affluent cities, says Andrew Zhu, director of Auckland-based Trace Research, so there’s a lot of room for growth. On Sept. 5, Comvita announced a joint venture with a Chinese partner to distribute its honey on the mainland.

Exciting times ahead!