Marketing.

[jamesc 4,900]

I went to an extra ordinary  meeting this afternoon , called by Mountain River , to whome we sell our venison weaner deer.

 

The meeting had nothing to do with honey, but was quite interesting in that it has everything to do with marketing honey.

 

Back in the autumn we didn't buy weaner deer to take through the winter and fatten as the writing was on the wall that with Covid the market was gonna be pretty tough  this time of year.

No kidding. The venison market in the US, where most of our produce goes has fallen off 80%.

The gist of the meeting was that if we could hold stock for a year, that would be great ..... in the meantime our 14day settlement would be spun out to 16 weeks, paid in instalments.And nobody was prepared to say whether the schedule would drop.

 

The head honcho talked of dropping the product price to generate sales momentum , but had gone against that idea as  in a non existent market place that was only gonna set a new bench mark price.... which would be very hard to raise.

 

 Do you hear where I am coming from ....? 

 

Think Honey.  Low demand for product, so drop the price into a slack market, sets the price ......

Thank goodness we can store honey in the drum quite cheaply.

We Beekeepers could learn a thing or two from our farming cousins.

 

In the meantime, we came  home with some very nice venison , which is delicious.

[jamesc 4,900]

And while we are on a roll, here's another Big Thought I had .....

 

The Gvt needs to keep out of meddling with affairs it knows nothing about.

It destroyed the honey industry.

 

And then it put the squeeze on agriculture in general telling us we were carrying too much debt.

Debt is risk, and one way  for a business to grow , so that the country can grow by the tax take  and build more healthcare facilities and bridges and skate parks  is to take a risk to generate income.

 So we sold assets to repay debt down to an acceptable level, and now the banks are grumbling that with such low interest rates the banking business is under pressure because of falling revenue.

We still do business with Westpac ,,, but it would be interesting to see what happens if they go bankrupt.

 

 

[yesbut 6,230]

I'm surprised that  such a thoughtful chap would support an Ocker business when there are viable alternatives at home !

[jamesc 4,900]

True ...... we used to be with the Trust Bank .  They got bought out by Westpac who rebranded the Darfield branch.

A few years later the the branch closed down and was replaced  with an ATM.

Over the road was the BNZ.  That also got closed down, but  no ATM replaced it.

 

Following on along those lines of thinking ..... the new publican at the Coalgate tavern has put in an ATM .....

 

 

[Gerrit 215]

10 hours ago, jamesc said:

 

 

The Gvt needs to keep out of meddling with affairs it knows nothing about.

It destroyed the honey industry.

 

 

 

 

 Not exactly the way I see it. The high value was achieved by the UMF factor, but the industry insisted to market it as Manuka. Should have been marketed on UMF. Much easier to comply with. The insistence to market on "Manuka" caused the industry to come off the rails and the government had to step in. Just my opinion!

[nikki watts 905]

1 hour ago, Gerrit said:

 Not exactly the way I see it. The high value was achieved by the UMF factor, but the industry insisted to market it as Manuka. Should have been marketed on UMF. Much easier to comply with. The insistence to market on "Manuka" caused the industry to come off the rails and the government had to step in. Just my opinion!

i believe active honey could/should  be sold on an activity scale, not varietal name.

its the non peroxide activity the consumer is buying regardless of the floral source. 

 UMF would have been perfect to use but once it was copyrighted and we had to pay huge $$ to use the letters the door closed on that option for the small family businesses. 

[tommy dave 1,184]

8 hours ago, nikki watts said:

 UMF would have been perfect to use

no pesky requirement for any manuka in the blend, easy to fortify with some basic chemistry, etc

[Jacob 83]

16 hours ago, tommy dave said:

easy to fortify with some basic chemistry, etc

 

To some extent perhaps, though you'll find that will become harder and harder to achieve as they incorporate more markers into their grading system.