Food & beverage stars for NZ to hitch its wagon to – report
There’s not that many reports you can sit down and study and go – uumm, interesting.
But Auckland-based
Coriolis
has done it (
again
),and their
‘Investorsguide to emerging growth opportunities in NZ food and beverage exports’ is, and I don’t saythis lightly, quite fascinating.
The company has deliberately taken its methodology and report-back from a (potential)investor’s point of view.
The simple objective was to find the next ‘wine’ – such as that fledgling industry existed25 years ago.
Over 500 food & beverage items, based on export trade codes, were screeneddown to 25 candidates for stage II in-depth investigation.
Each of these 25 received a quantitative and qualitative scorecard – which makes for strangelycompulsive reading. The snapshot view of the products includes:
- Global market – major importing and exporting countries.
- NZ exports andimports, key NZ metrics and firms
- Global market structure and situation – and thenature of the challenge; including leveragable existing NZ factors, potential source of valuecreation, challenges and limitations
This combination has Coriolis managingdirector Tim Morris putting some of his reputation on the line, though as he says, the judgementsprovided are backed by data – and past work for industry - and he’s quite happy to debate and ifnecessary change some of these opinions in the light of industry and individuals providing newinformation.
It is a report that brings clarity and light, compared to other types of report that muddlearound the middle, never reaching a conclusion. Framed from the point of view ‘well, what wouldyou put your money into’, it really does provide a single-minded focus.
Thus, the potential star performers for NZ according to Coriolis are salmon, honey and alcoholicspirits.
Salmonbecause there’s a large world market, NZ’s proportion of that is tiny, and our reputation,quality and price received are all top notch. Morris says the challenge for NZ is whether we’d beprepared to see more salmon farms residing on our coasts – does it fit our mental image of ourbeaches being a summer recreation pursuit?
Honey,especially manuka honey, has lots of potential too. There is a danger (like the term kiwifruit) thatwe haven’t laid claim to the name Morris says. NZ should also take advantage of the fact there’sa supply constraint around manuka honey, and head away from the notion it’s something to spread onour toast. “We should “weaponise” manuka honey,” Morris says, bringing forward moreapplications such as throat lozenges, oral sprays and would dressings.
Alcoholicspirits have the ability to ride on the coattails of the market entry and reputation forged byour wines. Selling a bottle of distilled and uniquely flavoured waters for say $70 is, when youthink about it, an excellent value-add. Like our early wine industry, there’s large number ofsmall firms, many headed by immigrants (often German), doing interesting and innovative products andleveraging off the New Zealand reputation.
However, this post in no way does justice to, I repeat, a quite fascinating report, with in-depthreports on salmon, honey and alcoholic spirits also available via the Coriolis website.
Apparently the whole project was done on the smell of an oily rag – but you’d hope and expectthat Coriolis picks up other consultancy work through clearly being New Zealand’s best at thissort of thing.
Morris reckons he could book all his working days till Christmas with food and beverage companieswanting to know more. You could almost call him a type of Santa with presents of knowledge.
Food & beverage stars for NZ to hitch its wagon to – report
Food & beverage stars for NZ to hitch its wagon to – report
