Australian honey is set to challenge Manuka honey for a lucrative share of the global medicinal honey market, with a Western Australian startup leading the push.
Australian Honey Ventures has signed landmark deals that will see its medicinal grade eucalyptus honey stocked in pharmacies across Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.
The landmark deals will put AHV on the trajectory of delivering an estimated 150 tonne of medicinal honey to the Middle East alone by 2025.
AHV CEO Jay Curtin said the company had been able to lift the value of their honey purely through marketing, allowing for beekeepers to receive better returns.
"We've known that our honeys in Australia are very medicinal but the government and the processors themselves have never poured enough funding into doing the marketing to really position Australian honey in the global market," she said.
"In New Zealand, they don't have multiple different varieties of honey that are medicinal, they just have Manuka.
"Here in Australia the money hasn't been put into marketing medicinal honeys but the people that have tried to do it have picked a challenger honey... here in WA they've picked jarrah.
"Jarrah now commands a high price in some medicinal markets but our other honeys like blackbutt and redgum, they are still priced very, very low.
"At the end of the day, if it's the same medicinal strength, it should be commanding the same prices."
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The AHV model means that apiarists receive a price based on total activity, a scale that measures honey's overall antimicrobial activity, putting all varieties of honey on a level playing field, regardless of how well-known it is.
Beekeepers can typically secure a return of $15 to $30 per kilogram based on this business structure.
Ms Curtin said the Middle Eastern markets prize honey for its medicinal qualities and have proved willing to pay AU$188 per jar of 35+ Total Activity honey.
"When I tell beekeepers we're paying $30 a kilogram for their blackbutt honey, they almost fall over," Ms Curtin said.
"This has the potential to quadruple the value of the Western Australia honey industry.
"We are a Western Australian started business but we are expanding right across Australia with very strong plans to start testing the east coast honeys to do the same thing.
"We need to be marketing our honeys very differently so we could potentially have 400 or 500 options of flavour varieties but they're sold and priced based on their strength."
AHV hopes to be supplying honey into about 200 Middle Eastern pharmacies by 2025.
The company this week opened its second capital raising campaign after rapid growth saw it surpass its first year goals in just eight months.
AHV also hopes to launch a premium table honey range into Woolworths.
"They are very interested in the table honey range, but are also considering the top shelf medicinal honey... they won't put a huge mark-up on it like they do overseas but they've said they really want some Australian medicinal honey on the shelf that is not Manuka, to rival the Australian and also the New Zealand Manuka," Ms Curtin said.
Ms Curtin said she didn't have any familiarity with honey growing up, but was now passionate about the opportunities available.
"It really hasn't been until the last three or four years that I've developed a keen interest on honey and more specifically the opportunity we have at our feet here in Australia to start supplying what I think is arguably the most medicinal and the most luxurious honey anywhere in the world to a global market," she said.
"We only produce about 500 tonnes of jarrah honey every two to three years but now because of the pay per TA pricing strategy, we've now probably got about 10,000 tonne of honey we can access all across Australia to put into these global markets. If we stayed with a pay per variety system, we're limiting the amount of volume we can tap into so paying per strength is about to tip this industry on its ear."