The business built on iwi ethics

In a tiny South Taranaki township, local iwi owned business Kaitahi is helping grow a niche  ‘native superfood’ industry for the benefit of generations to come. 

Sometimes success takes you by surprise. Kaitahi, The Native Superfood Company, only launched in May. But after exhibiting at three Fine Food Shows and winning Fine Food NZ’s 2018 innovation award the company has potential clients lining up to take their product and in volumes they hadn’t dreamed of. 

As Kaitahi’s business development manager Leonie Matoe explains, after the Auckland Fine Food Show a senior executive from a major national outlet asked if the company’s production could reach three tonnes. Leonie recounts that she said a very tentative ‘yes’, before the potential customer asked if that was daily or weekly. It was their potential monthly output, says Leonie.  

And yet, just a few weeks on they are hoping to lift that to six tonnes. 

Kaitahi, The Native Superfood Company produces a range of frozen superfood smoothy drops that include traditional Māori ingredients such as kūmara, pūhā and kawakawa. The smoothy drops mean there is no need for a blender. 

The company is iwi owned and operated and based in the tiny town of Waverley in South Taranaki. Its website explains that the company “believes that food is more than just combining ingredients, it is about feeding the force of life.   

“Kaitahi is a progressive venture that enables us to innovate with our traditions of caring, respecting and conserving. To thrive as one: that’s what Kaitahi is all about. We believe that our natural food has mana (integrity, prestige, power) and needs to be shared with the world.  We know, as many ancient cultures do, that nature’s pantry is a vital source of well-being.”   

Kaitahi and its sister company Kii Tahi Nursery, which has operated as a native plant nursery for the past 15 years, are owned by the local iwi Ngaa Rauru Kiitahi. Leonie says that part of the iwi’s business strategy is about being able to control decision making over the native plant foods used – sourcing it, growing it and gathering it from around the region. 

Essentially, it’s a social, ecological, entrepreneurship model which “recognises and captures value through enterprises where people and nature matter”. 

Kaitahi currently has a business team of five and also employs four gatherers and three processors of the traditional food, all whanau members who previously didn’t have work in this area of high unemployment. 

It sources kawakawa and pūhā locally or from neighbouring iwi and Kii Tahi Nursery is also undertaking growth trials of several other traditional foods. Leonie says they have merged scientific knowledge from Plant & Food Research with knowledge from local kaumatua of where and how the plants were grown in the past.  

“This has been part of the venture that brings the most rewards for me. We have woven that traditional knowledge with the latest science and arrived at a place where we are happy about exploring that interface to find new opportunities,” says Leonie. 

She says the business wants to work to keep this integrity as they go to scale. 

An example is the kawakawa gatherers who go out twice a week and following tikanga (values) they handpick single leaves “as we want that tree to keep producing for us”. 

While at one end it’s becoming an expensive exercise hand-picking 200kg of kawakawa, at the same time by building that ethic into what they produce and by adhering to the tikanga it adds value to the brand and product. 

The venture has also been created to connect with more local whānau and hapū groups. Kaitahi has an agreement with one local whānau trust, which has land laden with kawakawa, to gather the leaves from there. In return Kaitahi gives that whānau a number of mānuka plants from the nursery to support that whānau with its bee enterprise. 

The Kii Tahi Nursery has also conducted growth trials with native pūhā species. As part of this research they’ve discovered that native pūhā is almost an endangered species and “at risk” because of introduced species, from the Sow Thistle family, which have nearly taken over. 

However studies have also shown that the native pūhā has a higher proportion of natural bioactive compounds than the introduced species. The iwi is exploring where this native species is best grown as iwi elders say it used to grow along the coast as a seaside pūhā. 

For Leonie this means the venture is also an opportunity to revitalise native pūhā.  

Unique business model 

As to how the business came about, Leonie says it was a considered process. The iwi had been working on several business ideas over many months and through a series of workshops with Massey University iwi members decided they wanted to look at a social, ecological and entrepreneurial business model which reflected the iwi ethics – creating their own model titled Te Kawa a Maui. 

“This makes sure we are building a responsible business that adheres to our environmental ethics and to our people’s wishes. It has to make a profit but this idea of profit is applied across the ecological, social, entrepreneurial and the spiritual domains.” 

Native plant food emerged from those early discussions as the iwi wanted to leverage off the already well established Kii Tahi Nursery.  

The idea of a frozen superfood blend using traditional Māori ingredients was settled on and while the frozen smoothy drops are the first food product Kaitahi has launched it also has a number of other products it plans to develop including a recipe with karengo, an edible seaweed, and is looking at ways to create new flavours from a broader mix of native plant foods.  

The idea for the frozen drops came about almost serendipitously while initially putting all the ingredients into frozen smoothy blocks. A food technologist at Massey knew of a business that could turn them into droplets rather than the blocks. 

Leonie sees this as being all about the connections and relationships the venture is making along the way and they now have an agreement with a contract manufacturer in Hastings. 

She says the company entered into the Fine Food Shows not really knowing how they would go. 

“We knew we had a cool product and a great idea.” Focus groups had told them it looked good, but they still had no proof it would sell.  

They had priced a 1.2kg pouch at $40, positioned for the food trade attending the shows. This market appealed to the company as being more direct than going into a myriad of retail outlets.  

However, since the food show they have been approached by leading gourmet food outlets.   

“Our challenge as a new company is to be able to meet the demand we have created. We’ve only been going three months [and] it’s challenging and exhilarating but at the same time we are staying strong to realise the values and ethics that guide us.” 

Leonie says the plant foods are acknowledged as taonga and as such are precious and their availability is really dictating how far they can go. “We are happy to roll with that for now.”  

They are also constantly looking at ways to reduce production costs without compromising the sustainable cultivation and gathering of the traditional foods. 

Beyond expectations 

Leonie says their humility and naivety meant they did not expect [the business] to go off with such a bang and they weren’t 100 percent prepared for the product to go so well. 

“The greatest thing is a sense of pride and achievement. It’s very encouraging for our people and that future and vision will employ a lot of our people.” 

Oil and mining and intensive dairying have changed the landscape in South Taranaki “and we wanted to contribute to economic development in a way that makes sense to us. And ensure the ecological stays strong and our people are able to contribute over a long period of time. 

“We have generations and generations to consider and to create opportunities for.”