7. What drove me to search for the critical compound in manuka honey?

My interest in manuka honey had been sparked from childhood. My Uncle Don was a bee-keeper in Te Awamutu, Waikato during the 1930’s. His focus was producing clover honey for his own retail brand in local shops. During this period large tracts of the manuka tree still existed in the Waikato. With further land development no large tracts exist today.

Uncle Don told me he used to produce manuka honey not through choice but because the bees would collect it at a specific time of year. For him it was waste material, and he gave it to dairy farmers to feed to their cows. He would comment, the remarkable outcome was those cows never became ill whereas other cows had the normal run of diseases. Uncle Don queried why did manuka honey prevent cows from becoming ill?

I wanted to find out. This was the start to my journey in the manuka honey industry.

My career has spanned strategy and business development in the dairy, meat, and biotechnology sectors. A common theme throughout these roles was working across the entire value chain, from farm production and processing to international markets. Many businesses were established, employing technologies to produce value-added natural health products.

Later in my career, I had the opportunity to work with products derived from trees and plants, such as manuka honey. Comvita had a 31-year head start on my start-up company, Manuka Health New Zealand. The challenge was to disrupt their market-dominant position by building a sustainable enterprise that competed by establishing scientific validation of New Zealand bee products for natural health. One initiative to achieve this aim was discovering and commercializing methylglyoxal in manuka honey. This explained to consumers the unique benefits of manuka honey.

In just over 9 years we built a start-up business initially located in my home to delivering a wide range of consumer branded natural health products to 45 countries with annual sales $73 m. This was an exciting journey in the natural health industry!

You have reached the end of the Manuka Honey Series. Continue with the next series which is based on Building Global Businesses: 1. What were my motivations for starting businesses?