Mānuka Honey Bolters — Saudi Arabia & South Korea
- Bruce Roscoe
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
Some honey industry observers appear to believe that the mānuka boom was an historical event. Recent trade data don’t support that conclusion. Non-traditional markets such as Saudi Arabia and South Korea have rocketed to top-10 status by value. Elsewhere, the dark horse of Romania is in the ascendant. For exporters, off the beaten track may be the place to be.
By Bruce Roscoe
Saudi Arabia and South Korea may seem as different as kabsa and kimchi. But put those staples of Arabian and Korean cuisine aside, and similarities come into view. While anchored in ages-old culture and tradition, both are young states — Saudi Arabia was founded in 1932; the Republic of Korea in 1948 — created in postwar geopolitical realignments.
Saudi Arabia’s oil industry was kick-started by the Arabian American Oil Company. South Korea’s early economic foundation was laid by the replication of Japanese industries — steelmaking and shipbuilding and later car and consumer electrical goods manufacturing.
Both countries share the same level of per-capita income at approximately USD36,000 (World Bank data; latest year). While Saudi Arabia is deeply Islamic and South Korea ingrained in Confucianism, both seem progressively cosmopolitan in outlook. And both have developed a strong taste for mānuka honey.
Ultra High Value
Measured by the FOB price (free on board, which does not include freight or insurance costs), Saudi Arabia at NZD147.10 per kilogram, returns the highest value of any export market (CY2025 data). The weighting of retail-pack monofloral mānuka honey in the mix is also among the highest at 91.9%. Methylglyoxal (MGO) levels exceeding 800 milligrams per kilogram of mānuka honey explain the high price.
By value, honey exports to Saudi Arabia have grown at a compound annual rate of 25.5% in the 10 years to CY2025, when the FOB value reached NZD15.3m to place the country eighth most valuable export market (see Table 1).
Saudi Arabia is the largest of the six Gulf states. The five others which border the Arabian (or Persian, to Iran) Gulf are Oman, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait, and each has become a high-value market for monofloral mānuka honey. CY2025 exports to the smaller five states, led by UAE, reached NZD8.3m.
Entry Tactics
Dubai, the most populous of the emirates, hosts Gulfood, which it terms the world’s largest annual food and beverage exhibition. Seeds of success in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf state markets almost without question were planted during participation at earlier Gulfood shows.
New Zealand Trade and Enterprise (NZTE; an international business development agency) plays a pivotal role. Its representatives, who are available for hire as trade consultants, are stationed within New Zealand embassies.
Exporters in this writer’s circle report substantial benefits from such consultancy, the more so for markets where language is the beginning of the unfamiliar and little is as it may seem. The fact of receiving a call from an embassy, which often is how calls are introduced, opens doors and oils gears. In Saudi Arabia, where the monarch is also head of government, official status is imbued with royal prestige.
Warzone
Products exported to the Arabian Gulf states arrive in a warzone. The US-Iran conflict has escalated and entered its sixth month. All Gulf states host US military bases or installations, all of which, Iran has stated, are targets. Our map of Arabian Gulf states shows the nearness of Iran. The Strait of Hormuz at about 33 kilometres is no wider than Lake Taupo at its widest point.
Mānuka honey export data for the first half of any calendar year are only broadly indicative, as export volumes to the main markets in the northern hemisphere tend to concentrate in the second half to meet winter demand. For what they are worth, January-May data are encouraging. By value, the five-month total for the largest Gulf markets of Saudi Arabia and UAE increased 106.2% to NZD13.4m and 2.3% to NZD2.3m (year-on-year comparisons). The trade appears threatened most by suspension of commercial air services.
South Korea
If the mānuka market peaked in CY2020, South Korea missed the memo. Exports to the republic that struggles to free itself from Japan’s shadow reached NZD18.1m in CY2025, ranking the country seventh highest-value honey market. (Table 2 shows the 10-year volume, value, and price compound annual growth rates of 20.8%, 23.4%, and 2.1%.)
Although values for the top six markets range tall buildings higher at NZD29.8m (Australia) to NZD140.0m (US), the FOB price achieved for South Korea at NZD52.28 per kilogram was 38.9% higher than the average for all markets and reflected the high weighting (83.9%) of retail-pack monofloral mānuka honey.
Volume shipped to South Korea ran at an average 6.6 tonnes per week in CY2025, compared with just 1.5 tonnes 10 years earlier. Expansion of exports to this market is an achievement more remarkable for being unsupported by any free trade agreement. The country does not belong to the 12-member Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). Honey exporters, therefore, must wrestle with a complicated tariff, quota, and advance fee deposit system.
This market appears most navigable by large-scale, well-resourced exporters, export businesses operated by Koreans who can fathom the labyrinthine system, and exporters who engage the services of NZTE. As in the case of Saudi Arabia, NZTE operates a team from within the New Zealand Embassy in the South Korean capital of Seoul, with like advantages that the impression of official connection confers.
(Much would simplify if South Korea were to accede to CPTPP but accession would likely be blocked by Japan until a bilateral fisheries dispute is resolved.)
New Zealand honey brands with a strong footprint in Japan have a unique advantage in South Korea, for reasons both historical and psychological. Owing to the legacy of Japanese rule of the Korean peninsula from 1910-1945, many South Koreans seem possessed of a notion that “the good things that Japan has, we should have too”. Those include trends in natural foods as well as fashions.
A Japan marketing visit is easily extended to South Korea. A direct flight from Tokyo to Seoul at about 2.5 hours takes an hour less than Auckland to Sydney.
Romania
Romania, a European Union (EU) member, appears as a dark horse ready to bolt. It first appeared in honey export data as late as CY2017, for a volume of 60 kilograms worth NZD3,791. Exports to the former communist state have continued each year, and in CY2025 more than doubled from year-before levels to 27.9 tonnes (NZD1.4m).
With seesaw annual volumes ranging from 20,000 - 30,000 tonnes, Romania is the EC’s largest honey producer. It may seem an unlikely prospect as a growth market, given modest per-capita income of about USD22,000, but it is nonetheless a substantial honey importer as well as exporter.
And in a market where major producers such as Apidava and Rom Honey Group already promote a range of honeys for their health benefits, mānuka may be welcomed as more complementary than competitive. It should also have become more affordable, considering import duty on mānuka has reduced to zero under the EU-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement. (The staged reduction to zero for non-mānuka types should complete next year.)
Apidava and Rom Honey Group seem to have learned some trade tricks from New Zealand. Apidava advertises honey rated “Enzyme Activity +10” and Rom Honey Group more boldly has trademarked URM, which abbreviates “Unique Romanian Factor” (see Illustration 1).
Note: Report tables by the author; maps by Gemini.
Bruce Roscoe is a Japan-resident researcher and former foreign correspondent and securities analyst. He has visited South Korea several times for research purposes and worked in Saudi Arabia (Jeddah and Yanbu on the Red Sea coast) for 18 months.
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