TAI TOKERAU- the MANUKA & KANUKA AGRi-BIZ HUB of aotearoa

There is 720,000 ha of manuka/kanuka bushland in the North Island of Aotearoa, representing 6% of the total land mass. It is estimated that theTai Tokerau district (Northland) comprises approximately 15% of this total, delivering 108,000 ha of manuka/kanuka bushland. A development that would provide an oil extraction facility to support Grower-Producer landowners throughout the district. Expansion of capacity in the rohe that would help enhance the District / Kaitaia to become the manuka-kanuka capital of Aotearoa/NZ supporting a local NZ$500M pa cooperative enterprise processing oil from Grower-Producer members.

While much of the whenua in the rohe is general freehold land, Maori input into the project is important  due to the “Tikanga Compliance” process that is to apply to the growing and harvesting of the taonga and its processing through a cooperative structured enterprise owned and operated by landowners throughout the rohe who have (ideally) circa 100+ ha of manuka/kanuka covered whenua becoming Grower-Producer shareholder members of the Co-Op. Thirty three percent of a Grower-Producer’s manuka/kanuka would be harvested each year in keeping with environmental protection and the protocols of Tikanga.

Kaitaia is considered to be the ideal location to support a contract based harvesting operation. One that (1) starts with our launch harvesting team commencing cutting operations on Grower-Producer properties and then (2) trucking the raw foliage to the Kaitaia facility for oil extraction through the distillation process. Building the Grower-Producer supplier base will be a relatively straight forward process as negotiations are “one on one” with general freehold landowners. An easier negotiating party/process compared with the Maori freehold land system where multiple ownership often makes closing such arrangements more difficult.