The True Honey Company hits jackpot in London

The record-breaking Rare Harvest 1900 Manuka Honey from The True Honey Company which sold for $4964 per 230g jar at Harrods.

Tararua's The True Honey Company has just sold the world's most expensive honey for a record price of $4964/230g jar at Harrods in London. There are only 200 jars of this grade of honey, Harrods bought them all and they are in hot demand. Owner and founder Jim McMillan says "to achieve something of that standard is something the company is very proud about".

This honey has a UMF33 rating, higher than the True Honey Company's UMF31 which sold for the previous record price of $2724/230g jar last year.

A shipment ready for export.

UMF rates the manuka content of honey through a highly accredited process and is trusted by the industry and customers as high manuka content is sought after by people for its perceived health benefits.

This batch is the highest-rated and purest manuka honey Jim McMillan says he has ever made and its value comes from the way it is harvested and the quality of the manuka. He calls it a "remarkable miracle of nature that may never happen again."

This particular honey dates from the 2019-20 season in which Manuka struggled a bit climatically. Jim say when this happens there is less volume but much stronger manuka content. It has to mature for a while - up to a year – before it is bottled.

He believes it is also the product of working hard over the last few years building up a dedicated team of talented and passionate people who have gone to extremes working in some of the most remote, pristine parts of the country throughout the North Island and in the north of the South Island, paying high attention to detail in every aspect of honey production.

Part of the drive to produce this ultra-high end honey was to focus all the processing into one place at Oringi Business Park south of Dannevirke and in December 2020 the extraction plant was commissioned and validated by MPI, ensuring the entire operation from paddock to the pot was controlled. Every part of the process is monitored and traced to ensure the honey meets its guarantee of purity.

Jim McMillan says in the pursuit of the ultra-high grade manuka honey his company is "pushing the boundaries of what can be achieved."

He says for this to happen local landowner partners had to support him by providing land for the bees to be managed over winter and he said he wants to "continue to build relationships and involve them in the value chain helping them feel more connected to the production of honey."

He is also very grateful to Scanpower and its Community Trust for helping them to set up on the site. He said chairman Lee Bettles was very helpful in getting settled out at Oringi and continues to support.

The company employs 40 fulltime workers, mostly in Dannevirke, with 20 more casuals during the harvest season when his teams deliver and harvest from more than 6500 hives starting in the far north of Northland gradually moving south as the Manuka begins to flower.

Hives in Northland stay about eight weeks but for the other locations it is about a month.

The Coromandel Peninsula is next, followed by the east coast from Gisborne to southern Wairarapa, Golden Bay in Nelson, the central North Island and concluding in Taranaki in late January.

The future for the company looks as golden as its product. The True Honey Company already exports to Britain, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Japan and Europe and markets are opening up especially since the pandemic.

Jim McMillan believes his sales of honey may have been helped by the pandemic as people become more conscious of investing in health products and the ultra-rich more so than most.