Looking to India, “and Taking Our People and Place With Us”

Blanche Murray is the founder and director of Kai Ora Honey, a beekeeping and honey exporting business based in Awanui in the far North, and a director to Te Pitau Ltd, the operating arm of the Mānuka Charitable Trust. With a free trade agreement (FTA) with India signed and soon to be in force, she fields questions on a currently tiny, but potentially huge, market for mānuka honey.

Apiarist’s Advocate: Kia ora Blanche, thanks for taking the time to answer some questions for us. I say ‘kia ora’ intentionally, rather than ‘hello’ – your business is named Kai Ora, you proudly represent your Māori heritage through it, as well as your work with Te Pitau, and you even sat on the Māori panel for manuka to help get the India FTA over the line.

Blanche Murray: Kia ora. I did and that was an insightful experience. Despite being oceans apart there are some similarities between Māori culture and traditional Indian culture, which could assist our entry to the market with mānuka honey – and a free trade deal helps too!

Blanche Murray, founder and director of Kai Ora Honey and director of Te Pitau, says the potential of the India honey market is only as a “value add” but “India doesn't need convincing that honey is medicine … our values aligned before we ever showed up together”.

AA: Indeed, and the FTA is expected to take force by, at latest, April 2027. So, is Kai Ora Honey considering the Indian market?

The short answer, yes. India's middle class is already 430-million-plus people and on track to pass 700 million by 2031. That’s households earning roughly NZD9,000 to 54,000 a year, with incomes climbing and real demand for premium natural health products.

There’s a catch though – it only works as value-add. We're not shipping commodity honey into a country that produces plenty of its own. But India doesn't need convincing that honey is medicine. Their traditional medicine, known as Ayurveda, has been saying it for thousands of years. Honey as rongoā is already how they think. Our values aligned before we ever showed up together.

AA: How would that compare to other markets, in your experience?

We export to Japan, Canada, Romania and the UAE, and each market taught us something. India is different because we're not introducing honey – we're introducing our honey. So, we lead with People and Place, not lab numbers: our whānau, our whenua in Te Hiku, kaitiakitanga of the bee. Family, land, tradition – India gets that.

AA: The world’s highest population, nearly 1.5 billion people, and a global top five economy. Is it intimidating?

Yes, of course. It's massive and layered – different regions, languages, channels, price points. But that's not a reason to sit it out, it's a reason to do the homework. That's where we are: building relationships, learning the regulations, positioning properly before we push.

Blanche Murray has been up close during negotiations between New Zealand’s honey industry and India to help form the new FTA, including during Indian prime minister Narenda Modi’s visit to Auckland in July.

AA: What should exporters be wary of, and how should we approach it as an industry?

The trap is the race to the bottom. India produces over 150,000 tonnes of honey a year at prices we'll never match – and shouldn't try to. The FTA has our back: it's the first time India has given any country preferential access for honey. Tariffs on mānuka drop 75 percent over five years, and the cut only applies to premium honey. It's built to reward value-add, not volume.

I saw why up close, as part of the Māori Panel for Mānuka during the negotiations. Honey was a difficult hurdle to get included – far from a given. What moved the dial was authenticity: who we are as New Zealand, our culture and history, and the Māori connection to mānuka.

That mahi continues through Te Pītau Limited, the operational arm of the Mānuka Charitable Trust, where I serve as a director – protecting the distinctiveness, mātauranga and cultural history of mānuka through a certification trademark, building toward a geographic indicator, or GI.

New Zealand currently exports India only a relatively miniscule seven tonnes of honey a year. The headroom is enormous — if we walk in together and don't undercut each other at the door. Structures get you to the door; relationships get you inside. And we're lucky to have partners like Mallika Janakiraman, an excellent trade consultant, passionate about the connections, and authentic protections.

AA: You mention that elusive term “GI”. New Zealand is yet to earn a geographic indicator for mānuka honey in any market. Are they a pipe dream, or worth chasing?  

GIs are no niche idea: they've protected communities and their craft for generations. Frameworks for them are growing across the EU, Asia and Africa and, after completing GI training in Espelette, France in 2024, I've seen first-hand how the GI framework grows and protects a product and place in market.

GI’s grow other eco-systems too, such as tourism. We have even hosted wahine from Espelette here in Ahipara Feb 2025.

Some here still don't see the value in a GI. India does. We'd be fools not to take note.

AA: Kai Ora has been spotted on social media welcoming Indian visitors to the business. How strong are these connections?

In June we hosted Nimit Singh of Madhumakhiwala, a sustainable beekeeping and honey enterprise in India, here with the Asia New Zealand Foundation. We took him into our ngahere planted trees and visited hives in Te Hiku, and the overlap was uncanny – beekeeper livelihoods, bee conservation, rural communities. His kaupapa is our kaupapa. We're now talking long-term: not just selling mānuka into India, but working alongside local beekeepers, learning both ways, and looking after the bee.

Then in July I was in the room when Prime Minister Luxon hosted Prime Minister Modi in Auckland, and you could feel the relationship shifting gear. The door to India is opening. Our job is to walk through it well – and take our people and our place with us.