Honey company named NZ's fastest-growing

Masterton-based manuka honey business Watson and Son has been named the 2008 Deloitte Fast50 Unlimited fastest-growing company in New Zealand.
The 60-employee firm led by former Rathkeale College science teacher Denis Watson, who formed the business in 2004, on Wednesday night took out three categories at the awards evening in Wellington.
Not only did the Pragnell Street business crown the elite company list this year with phenomenal revenue growth of 784 per cent from 2006 to 2008, but the family-run company also took awards for the Fastest Growing New Entrant and Fastest Growing Consumer Products Business.
Deloitte Fast50 leader Matt McKendry cited the business as "a brilliant example of a Kiwi company making the most of a relatively scarce local product, securing its supply chain, adding value in an innovative way, and doing extraordinarily well".
Members of the Watson clan each hold key positions in the company, including company business development manager Jono Scarlet, who said Christian belief is "a foundation for the family" that own 75 per cent of the company with a quarter stake sold last year to Bideford farmer Derek Daniell.
Mr Scarlet said his father-in-law started the business in 2002 with a handful of hives and soon afterwards developed a working friendship with world authority on manuka honey, Waikato University professor Peter Molan.
"It just took off. Now we work 20,000 hives in three hubs; Wairarapa, Northland and Southland and we almost entirely export about 20 tonnes of product a month.
"The Southland hives are more a breeding base where varroa hasn't reached yet and we migrate them up and on to honey flows in Wairarapa and Northland."
Mr Scarlet said taking top award on Wednesday night was a complete surprise "because we were just hoping to make the list" and heralds the planned capture of export contracts for medical grade manuka honey next year.
He said a subsidiary company has been formed, ManukaMed New Zealand, which will develop medical products while the parent business focuses on beekeeping and production, he said.
Mr Watson, now holidaying overseas with wife Meryl, plans to put the family business stake into a charitable trust to ease donation to third world countries of their medical products.
Over the next five years, pending regulatory approval, the company proposes to develop more than 20 medical products including skin treatments, lip balms, throat lozenges and wound dressings.
"We just got listing acceptance with (British supermarket giant) Tescos so sent over two containers in May and June.
"Our first product got into their stores in August," Mr Scarlet said.
Only about 2 per cent of Watson and Son product is now being distributed through a single buyer in Wairarapa, he said, with the grade certified pots selling at retail from about $15 up to $90 and divided into the Riversdale brand for honey harvested in Wairarapa and Spirit's Bay for honey gathered in Northland.
Another project just launched involves the partnership of the Masterton-based firm with Far North iwi authority Te Runanga o Te Rarawa, and regional development agency Enterprise Northland to intensify the production of bioactive manuka honey harvested in the Far North.
Over the next five years, the project is set to establish a beekeeper training college, the nurturing of beekeeping as a cottage industry in the Far North, and the construction of processing, storage and quality assurance facilities.
The partnership is expected to create about 200 jobs and generate annual earnings at full production of about $68 million.