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Asian investors keen on organic baby food
By Marta Steeman
Christchurch organic baby food company Green Monkey has Thai and Chinese investors interested in taking a stake in the company.
The seven-year-old company has been developing a niche market of premium organic baby food using contract organic growers and suppliers and outsourcing the manufacturing of the products to a plant in Napier to enable the company to remain lean.
The company sold brightly coloured pouches of organic blended fruit and vegetables and fruit and meat.
Company director and part-owner Andy Macbeth said that this weekend the company was hosting a few Thai and Chinese investors in Napier where their baby food was manufactured.
The group was led by a Thai billionaire who Macbeth had got to know very well and who traded food products in China. He had established a joint venture with Chinese investor-partners focused on organic food and wanted Green Monkey organic milk infant formula and food products to be the first products the joint venture marketed in China.
The Thai billionaire had a New Zealand connection. His son had been educated here at high school and at Otago University.
"They have flown out to meet and see our factory and are wanting to actually potentially downstream invest in Green Monkey but also partner in the short term in marketing and in distribution in China."
Green Monkey was poised to launch New Zealand's first organic baby milk formula, targeted at China, he said. They would be talking with the Thai-Chinese group about capacity to supply. The ability to meet demand was always a big question for the Chinese, Macbeth said.
Green Monkey wanted to collaborate in a trading relationship as a test to prove the business model would work as "phase one".
"The intention was for them to move to an investment or joint venture in phase 2. What is already happening is they are almost expressing a desire to do that pretty much instantly. Our preference is to really build the relationship first and take the time to get to know each other a lot better and prove we can work well together in the long term. If that will work we have indicated we will be open-minded about investment."
Macbeth's partners are Charlotte Rebbeck and her sister Lizzie Dyer who founded the company seven years ago in Christchurch.
He said they recognised that to sell in China they needed partners "on the ground" and this group had a great deal of experience there. Some investors had been chief executives of very large food businesses in China.
"Charlotte and I have always believed what we are building has the capability to be a global brand."
He said the Thai billionaire could see the megatrends – quality, safe food and quality safe baby food to China and Green Monkey fitted into those trends.
For the making of the organic baby milk it had partnered with Auckland-based Contract Manufacturing and had been working closely with top food scientist Lynley Drummond. Fonterra would be the organic milk supplier.
Macbeth said Green Monkey had already secured an order from a Hong Kong chain of specialist baby shops, Eugene, and that would be a market trial. The company hoped to be supplying the Chinese market by early next year. The company saw the milk product as one it could scale quite quickly.
A year ago the company secured a contract to supply its baby food in 304 Woolworths supermarkets in Australia and Macbeth said they were hopeful of adding Coles, the other huge supermarket chain in Australia.
The Australian market was going well and they had been achieving strong growth in the past three months. Once they secured Coles they had pretty much the platform needed in Australia and intended to expand their range of products.
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