About Mānuka South - Our 100% New Zealand-Owned Luxury Mānuka Honey Brand
We’ve been looking after your family’s health for over 38 years.
From the beekeepers we partner with to the jars we pack our honey into, Mānuka South is proud to put our name on handcrafted mānuka honey that never compromises on standards.
100% New Zealand-owned and operated, this is what the best honey in NZ from a UMF-certified mānuka honey producer looks like.
A Family Business Built on Quality, Not Compromise
We didn’t begin as a honey brand; we began as a family’s commitment to natural health.
When Rob and Lynda Haines founded the New Zealand Health Food Company in 1988, they shared a simple vision. To supply hand-picked natural health products that genuinely enrich the lives of Kiwis, built around honest, positive, and valuable connections with the people they work with and the customers they serve.
Then, in 2013, their son Sam joined the business after living overseas, bringing with him a love of high-end luxury products and the inspiration for Mānuka South. The sophisticated dark branding, handcrafted approach, and bespoke packaging all reflect how truly exceptional honey deserves to be treated, as the rare and refined product it is.
Today, thirty-eight years on, four generations of the same family have worked within the business, sharing the gift of good health with people across the globe. We continue to stand by our founding values as the core of every batch we produce: selecting the best locations, building long-lasting relationships with our beekeepers, and never prioritising volume over quality.
Mānuka South is a premium luxury mānuka honey brand that the whole family is passionate about. And the attention to detail is evident in every element of our products.
What Makes Mānuka South Honey Different
There's no shortage of mānuka honey on the market. What's genuinely rare is a producer with both the patience and the process to make it exceptional.
Mānuka South honey is carefully matured after harvest. Every batch is blended in small quantities and processed at consistently low temperatures to preserve the natural enzymes in raw honey and retain its health properties, exactly as nature intended. Cellaring our premium range allows the UMF properties to develop and reach their full potential, which is why we consistently produce honey with some of the highest MGO and UMF results available. It’s the kind of detail that only true mānuka honey experts in NZ understand.
Each vintage brings its own character, and our selection process is designed to identify the very best honey and cellar it until it reaches its full potential. This is what gives Mānuka South honey its hallmark complexity, integrity, and consistency.
The result is an award-winning honey that's unmistakably Mānuka South. Smooth and rich in texture, creamed to perfection using traditional New Zealand methods by our master honey craftsman. The flavour carries an elegant maturity: a silky consistency on the palate with earthy, toasted notes and a slightly bitter finish that signals genuine potency.
This high-quality mānuka honey production process is what sets us apart as a premium bee products producer.
From Hive to Jar: Our Beekeeper Relationships
Great mānuka honey doesn't begin in a blending room. It begins with the right relationships. As a high-quality mānuka honey producer, we've always known that the standard of what ends up in the jar starts long before harvest.
We made a conscious decision early on not to focus on beekeeping. Instead, we've spent over thirty years building and nurturing long-term partnerships with experienced apiarists who share our values of quality and sustainability. These aren't just business connections. They're part of the Mānuka South family.
It's because of these fantastic connections that we get first pick of the very best Mānuka honey available from all the top producers in New Zealand. Only the finest-quality honey available is hand-selected for our premium product range, sourced exclusively from areas that are clean, flower and mānuka-rich, and diverse. It’s the standard you’d expect from the world’s best honey company, and the standard we hold ourselves to.
The spellbinding landscapes, the bounty of natural resources, and the generosity of the people are what make New Zealand one of the most beautiful and precious places on earth. And it's what makes the honey it produces genuinely unlike anything else in the world.
Our Commitment to Sustainability
We are committed to sustainability. Working alongside bees and beekeepers for over thirty years has given us a unique understanding of the importance of reducing waste and minimising our environmental impact. An estimated 1/3 of the food we eat depends on insect pollination, and bees pollinate 70 different crop types. However you look at it, bees play a vital role in the biodiversity of our planet.
Bee populations are in decline globally. The good news is that a lot of this decline is remediable. It is an essential part of the Mānuka South philosophy to look after our earth for generations to come.
It is very important to us that our beekeepers consider the welfare of their bee colonies, which is why we are very selective with our suppliers. Our beekeepers are actively involved in cultivating new mānuka plantations in areas with land and soil degradation, ensuring we do our part to replenish soils and contribute positively to the biodiversity of our precious country.
Our commitment to sustainably sourced honey extends to how we package it. All our boxing is printed using PEFC-certified resources. Our UMF 5+ through the UMF 20+ range uses 100% recycled PET plastic jars, and all our glass honey jars use recycled glass. Our Limited Reserve range comes in a Reserve Case made from 100% FSC-certified wood, responsibly sourced and independently verified.
Certified, Authenticated, and Trusted Worldwide
Every jar of Mānuka South honey is individually packed and fully traceable right back to the drum of extracted honey and the region/apiary it came from. Our UMF certification independently verifies the unique properties of our mānuka honey, ensuring its potency, purity, and authenticity. The higher the UMF rating, the greater the concentration of the naturally occurring compounds that make genuine mānuka honey so remarkable.
Our monofloral range carries UMF grading from UMF 5+ through to our Limited Reserve, the pinnacle of what New Zealand mānuka honey production can achieve. UMF grading is only awarded to monofloral honey, and every rating we carry has been independently tested and verified.
For our international customers, Mānuka South also holds Halal and Fernmark certification: two globally recognised marks of authenticity and New Zealand origin that give buyers confidence wherever they are in the world.
When you open a jar of Mānuka South, you're not taking anyone's word for it. The certification, batch authentication, and provenance speak for themselves.
That's what makes us producers of the best honey in NZ. Have questions about our handcrafted manuka honey or other luxury health products? Contact our team today.