Overseas market growing for Tongan vanilla

Transcript

A New Zealand business selling vanilla grown in Tonga says demand for its products is growing in its overseas markets particularly in Japan and United States.

Heilala Vanilla is aiming to expand its export capacity with support from the Increasing Agricultural Commodity Trade project, funded by the European Union and run by the Secretariat of the Pacific Community.

The co-founder and director of the company, Jennifer Boggiss told Beverley Tse about the IACT project and how the business is expanding.

JENNIFER BOGGISS: IACT has been instrumental in assisting us with two things. The first one was a piece of equipment to prepare the vanilla beans for exporting back to New Zealand and the second thing was assistance with the commencement of our organic certification programme. As you can probably appreciate it can be costly to get specialised third grade equipment up to Vava'u. So that was great assistance. And the second, the organic certification, that's important to us really to formalise our organic principles and practices, which we've been practising all along. But it is quite an expensive process to go through. So that's helped us which in turn increased demand for our product in our overseas markets, particularly Japan and USA. And that in turn will obviously increase demand for vanilla beans from Tonga. So it's all about building industry.

BEVERLEY TSE: I understand you're hoping to expand shipments of vanilla products to overseas markets. How are you hoping to do that?

JB: Well we've spent the last three years really building export markets in Australia, Japan, US, Brazil, a small amount to Denmark, Singapore. And that's all about building sort of networks and contacts in those markets. And now the focus changes from that sort of initial set up to building a brand in those markets and in turn building sales volume. So that's all about spending lots of time in markets and doing you know, all sorts of activities, whether it be trade shows or PR programmes or in store tastings and demos.

BT: So a lot of promotional work?

JB: Yeah, a lot of palming the pavement and spreading the Heilala love as we say.

BT: Do you have enough supply for the demand out there?

JB: Yes we do at the moment, yes we do. So we've grown in a really sustainable, manageable way.

BT: Now I understand you travelled to Japan last year and you said the trip provided valuable insights into ways to boost sales. What were some of those valuable insights?

JB: Well Japan's a really different market and each market has it's own unique challenges. Specifically in the area of food safety quality and documentation. But now that we've got that established, the next step is building close relationships with our in market partner there.