Pacific food exports to promote tourism in pacific

Transcript

Pacific partners in the food industry say more open doors to export internationally will help put the region on the map.

Pacific brands who exhibited at the recent Fine Food trade expo in New Zealand say a new partnership with a New Zealand food distributor will have a valuable impact on tourism, the economies and sustainability in the islands.

Niue Vanilla has been a frequent exhibitor at overseas trade shows including in Paris, France, Italy, Australia and Singapore.

STANLEY KALAUNI: Most of them have never heard of Niue, have never been to Niue. And what we normally do as well when we exhibit, is we also carry our Niue tourism brochure. I mean, otherwise we'll be answering questions about Niue every day and every five minutes. So what we do is we hand out a lot of these brochures to customers and people just coming over to our booth that follow the smell of Vanilla and find us.

INDIRA STEWART: And how many people does your business employ in Niue?

SK: Well the company only employs full-time two people and around about two part-time as well. We work closely with farmers back in Niue - we have around about 75 farmers. We buy the beans directly from them. We pay them at the gate. And then we process it and market it and sell it overseas to global markets. So that removes the responsibility for the farmers. So they concentrate on farming and producing the vanilla beans. And that's how I got in first. You know once I stepped into it, I found that I need to help my people and I need to do it properly. And from then on we decided to create a brand, register a company and five years later we're in New Zealand and a lot of people are now our customers.

IS: In terms of you working with the farmers, there must be a lot of value in the fact that they maybe trust their own people in terms of doing business, especially with importing internationally. Does that help?

SK: Absolutely. You've got to have a relationship with them. That's how I got involved. Before, farmers used to give their vanilla beans to the exporters. You never get paid until their vanilla beans are sold overseas. I do it completely the opposite way. I pay them at the gate. None of this stuff - 'oh I'll pay you in three months time when you sell your product.' That really really works really well. It motivates the farmers to go back to the farm. It produces the beans for us and positively in a way forward we can have a sustainable supply to the market.

IS: It must feel good to be able to give back to your home country and give back to the economy.

SK: That's the whole point of our involvement in Vanilla is actually to contribute back to the community and the people. So what we do is we do our best and we pass on the benefits to the farmers. So we are passing whatever we can pass on in terms of margins to the farmers. So yeah, we're very happy to be involved with the farmers.