The Republic of Korea delivered an upbeat message about New Zealand velvet to a delegation of industry leaders during a recent visit there.
Deer Industry NZ (DINZ) market manager Rhys Griffiths told a NZ Deer Farmers Association (DFA) branch chairs meeting that new opportunities are around the corner.
Griffiths and DINZ chief executive Innes Moffat had 17 meetings with contacts over the week-long visit, confirming that working with companies who are investing in innovative food and Korean medicine products in South Korea, which consumes about 60% of NZ’s velvet, remains the right strategy.
Griffiths said there is more investment into new products and more research in the pipeline, in the healthy foods and Korean medicine sectors.
During the visit Moffat signed a memorandum of understanding with the chief executive of a big Korean medicine company.
In addition, DINZ organised for the NZ ambassador to host a dinner at his residence in Seoul for the chief executive officer of Yuan Care, a subsidiary of Korea’s largest pharmaceutical company.
Another company they visited has developed an innovative online service to prepare and dispense prescriptions from Korean medicine doctors. They pick the herbs and products, including stipulating the part of the dried NZ velvet stick the sliced velvet must come from, package the prescriptions for individual patients and distribute them to the homes of Koreans nationwide.
“To put the company in perspective, they are 10% of our industry, have aspirations to get bigger and to grow rapidly into new innovative markets,” Moffat said.
NZ has a great story to tell too.
“Customers are promoting the NZ-ness of their products and NZ velvet is getting more coverage.
“We will start to engage soon in some consumer promotional activity.”
China, on the other hand, is still experiencing difficulty with economic uncertainty and covid lockdowns.
“The current level of unprocessed velvet stock in the market could be a little bit more than the usual but not unexpected,” Griffiths said.
Meanwhile, DINZ is exploring potential in other Asian markets.
New joint promotion activity in Taiwan targeting Father’s Day with the Cheon Nok product went very well, with sales volumes lifting significantly over the previous year.
A five-year programme will be starting in Vietnam soon and exploratory work will commence next year to better understand opportunities in Japan.
Balancing all the market indicators, especially the growing Korean healthy food market and logistics issues for Russian velvet, there is confidence out there for NZ deer velvet, Griffiths said.
“We expect consumption of NZ velvet will continue to increase in the medium term.”
