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Newsmaker
GROWTH POTENTIAL: Hawke’s Bay squash grower Shane Newman says having direct connections with Asian markets will help identify opportunities for new products.
A taste for opportunity
A plant-based milk made from New Zealand buttercup squash has found its way to supermarket shelves in Asia. Colin Williscroft reports.
SHANE Newman and his family have been growing squash in Hawke’s Bay for more than 40 years, but he’s excited about the potential opportunities from his latest project.
Kabochamilk is a collaboration between Newman, one of NZ’s largest buttercup squash growers, and Sachie Nomura, a Japanese celebrity chef and owner of Auckland cooking school Sachie’s Kitchen, who is also the brains behind avocadomilk, a world-first, award-winning plant-based milk.
Like its avocado equivalent, Kabochamilk is 100% vegan, free from artificial flavours and colours and, according to Newman, “tastes outstanding”.
Kabocha is a type of winter squash, sometimes referred to as Japanese pumpkin.
Newman produces around 12,000 tonnes of fresh squash annually that is packed and shipped into Asia.
He has a partnership with a Gisborne squash grower and an Auckland-based fresh produce export business to market squash under their own brand, known as Three Good Men.
They’ve built that around three promises: consistent quality, total traceability and customer happiness.
“We’ve established a strategy on having direct retail distribution and contact with a value-added story. We spend quite a bit of time up in the market space with promotion and supporting our retail customers,” Newman said.
However, his fresh produce export partners are not involved with the milk product, with Newman coming up with the idea after seeing the success of avocadomilk.
“We’ve always thought this (squash) is a fantastic product and we wanted to add more value to what we’re currently doing,” he said.
“We wanted to get better utilisation of our product, so we came up with this idea and concept.”
He contacted Nomura with his idea for the plant-based milk, which led to the development of a recipe and the result is now being exported into Asia.
He says Kabochamilk uses a similar heat-treated process to that used to make avocadomilk and the result is a product that’s shelf stable for at least 12 months.
Other than a couple of small imported ingredients, everything involved with it is grown, produced or manufactured in NZ.
“While all our product will go offshore, we’re using local farmers, local R&D, local manufacturers, packaging and domestic logistics companies, so the benefits to the New Zealand economy are considerable,” he said.
The product utilises a range of squash varieties blended to create a stable flavour and one of the big advantages for Newman is that it uses squash that wouldn’t be exported as fresh produce.
“Kabochamilk uses unexported tag-3 fruit, creating a high-value, sustainable and exportable product from produce that would otherwise go to waste,” he said.
“Tag-3 is the minimum grade for acceptable quality produce under T&G standards.
He says kabocha is a staple and regular healthy part of the Japanese and east-Asian diet and it’s very satisfying to have hit upon a new opportunity for local growers.
“There are no other comparable kabocha milks in any of those markets and it became a really exciting opportunity to fill that gap,” he said.
It’s positioned as an everyday ‘milk alternative’ product that can be consumed at any time as a simple, tasty way of introducing healthy nutrients into the family diet.
NZ is one of the largest exporters of squash to Japan and Korea and by tapping into the distribution and retail channels that Newman and his family have established through their fresh horticultural and export business, they have been able to gain access to a distribution network of around 5000 Asian retailers, supermarkets and convenience store chains.
“Our business experience in Asia is very strong. We send our fresh product right through Asia, so we’re pretty familiar with the markets, the taste attributes and what the customers are looking for, especially with the direct contacts we have with the retail sectors up there,” he said.
“We think this is a huge opportunity, not just Japan but Korea, China and there’s other South-East Asian markets that we feel would fit really well, especially at that high-end level, being a health beverage.”
However, it hasn’t all been plain sailing, with the pandemic creating challenges, particularly around shipping and staffing but also in other areas.
“We’re forecasting ongoing issues with disruptions to shipping and the shipping elements of costs but it’s not only that, there’s the operational side of not being up there amongst our customers,” he said.
As part of his fresh produce export business, Newman used to visit Asia three or four times a year but he’s not been for two years.
“It’s a big part of our business, the relationships we have in our markets, and while Zoom and technology has been good to bridge that gap, that direct contact has been taken away,” he said.
“We want to open that up again and build on it as soon as this thing starts to get under control.
“The direct costs we see. Staffing and shipping are definitely real and they are challenging but we underestimate the (importance of the) direct contact we have with our customers and the relationships we have in our markets. They are valued heavily and that’s why we do this.”
Kabochamilk received more than $95,000 through the Ministry for Primary Industry’s Sustainable Food and Fibre Futures fund and Newman says the story of the product being grown and produced in NZ is an important part of the branding.
“New Zealand growers already have very high credibility among consumers, so we emphasise the product’s origin story in our marketing,” he said.
“The market feedback already has been extremely positive, from product concept to taste, to brand.”
He can see other opportunities in the sorts of spaces Kabochamilk is being positioned in.
He says those markets are opening up and consumers’ tastes are shifting all the time, so it’s about finding those opportunities and having direct connections with the market to understand those types of shifts and opportunities.
