Why Manuka Honey Needs the Champagne Treatment

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Manuka honey has become a luxury staple. Every high-endsupermarket offers this supposedly miracle product. To meet this surge in popularity, New Zealand produces roughly 10,000 tons of genuine manuka honey per year. Yet global sales of products labelled “manuka” total around 50,000 tons annually. A recent piece in the Financial Times noted that a 2024 report suggested up to 90% of honey sold in the UK may not be pure honey at all.

Unlike Champagne or Parmigiano, manuka has no formal geographical indication. The word “manuka” is not globally protected as a Geographical Indication (GI) or exclusive term. Its use on labels is governed by local food labelling lawsrather than a single authority.

This is not for lack of trying. In 2023, New Zealand’s Intellectual Property Office ruled against the country’s beekeepers in their attempt to secure exclusive trademark rights to the word “mānuka.”

There is growing consensus that mānuka should be protected similarly to high end European food products, but New Zealand currently only has a GI framework for wines and spirits.

You can contrast this with the EU model, where Champagneand parmesan have legal teeth globally. Manuka doesn’t, despite being a taonga (cultural treasure) to Māori.

So how can a producer remain competitive in exporting honeywhilst maintaining good practices?

Manuka Doctor is the only manuka honey brand globally to have achieved and retained the BSI Kitemark for Food Assurance, following rigorous audits carried out in New Zealand. Quality assurances such as the BSI Kitemark verifyprovenance, traceability and bee welfare.

Some companies take it further. Under Matthew Pringle, honey company Manuka Doctor’s environmental and quality controls have dramatically increased. Every batch of Manuka Doctor honey is independently lab-tested, and each jar carries the New Zealand government’s certified sticker. This certification confirms the presence of four key chemical markers and a DNA marker. Manuka Doctor oversees 10,000 beehives across New Zealand’s North and South Islands.

Crucially, the fraud problem isn’t just about authentic producers and consumers being cheated. It’s also about what happens to bees when production is driven by dishonest volume.

Honey can be adulterated by overfeeding bees sugar instead of allowing them to forage on natural nectar, producing a greater yield of “fake” honey as a result. Some estimate that honey is the third most adulterated food globally after milk and olive oil.

Producers outside New Zealand have used unsustainable beekeeping practices and planted massive manuka shrub plantations to replicate the product. The BSI Kitemark is notable because it specifically includes bee welfare as an audited component, something few certifications consider.

Certification matters not just for standards, but for economic survival. New Zealand’s manuka honey exports were valued at NZ$387 million in 2024, down from a NZ$446 million peak in 2020. The industry is losing momentum as competition and fraud intensify.

In 2024, Chinese honey imported to the UK cost just 84p per kilo, compared with £14.70 per kilo for New Zealand honey. Legitimate NZ beekeepers are being undercut by products that trade on the manuka name without meeting the standards. Economically motivated adulteration of honey has been estimated to have caused up to $1 billion of economic damage to American beekeepers between 2015 and 2019.

The Mānuka Charitable Trust is actively lobbying for a geographical indication system modelled on France and Italy’s protections. Companies like Manuka Doctor, who invest in independent verification, traceability, and bee welfare are doing the work that regulation should be doing. But industry self-regulation isn’t enough. The product needs legal protection recognised internationally to ensure fraudulent products can be litigated, and the true value of Manuka is respected.

Disclaimer: Written in partnership with APG.