Our history
The Pursuit of Happiness. The heart of our hive.
Our story began in 1959, when Ben Rawnsley (our brands founder) pioneered apitherapy in New Zealand. By 1975 the brand Happy Valley was more than just filling your own jar at Bens farm in a little known place called Happy Valley in Auckland. He had now developed a range of products using byproducts from the hive. Our first retail store was opened where customers could come and fill their own jar of honey and find out about the power of nature.
In 1990 Happy Valley harvested the first commercial quantities of Fresh Royal Jelly in New Zealand — perfecting the process to what it is today.
Six decades later, our family has grown.
Happy Valley has grown. But our goal is same: every day, we still go out on a limb to pursue happiness, in the form of real mānuka honey honey and hive based well-being products — the best New Zealand has to offer.
Our people
Mark Harvey
Group CEO
Mark has been steering the hive since 2009. A 4th generation kiwi with a passion for entrepreneurial business, being involved in start-ups and small businesses across a multiple of industries. Mark has been instrumental in bring together all companies that make up the Melita Group today and is a CEO that’s involved in all areas of our company and well respected. A lover of spreadsheets, sport and working outside on his lifestyle property. Happiest when away from phones and in the Greek Islands.
Favourite product
Rewarewa Honey – for its caramel taste
Interesting fact
At 10 years old he ran 10kms each way to get to rugby training, all so he could play for the best team in the district – but to get there on time he had to sneak out of school early.
Narissa Harvey
GM Brands & Consumer
Joining the company in 2013, Narissa brings with her a wealth of experience working in Sales & brand Management across FMCG and luxury goods in multi-national companies both her in NZ and Internationally. Mother to 1 son, and a Dog named Larry. Most happiest when with her Family and friends laughing and dreams of returning to Tulum in Mexico and getting Croatia off the bucket list.
Favourite product
Honeycomb - on a cheese platter with blue cheese and Quince paste (thank her later) Royal Skin night Cream, and Propolis & Manuka Oil for the First Aid Kit.
Interesting fact
She has a sister born on the same day, but they are not twins as they are 5 years apart - and it runs in the family
Alesha Parkes
Retail, Admin & Contracts Manager
For Alesha, being part of the Happy Valley family means being able to work alongside her actual family as her husband Jason is also a valuable member of the team. Before arriving at Happy Valley, Alesha worked for another family business helping with race horses and discovered our company when working next door at the Famous Strawberry Shack. When not working with bees, Alesha’s passion for animals continues in her home life with horses which she has always ridden and is happiest when on the back of one. In between being a busy working mum, she indulges in netball, water sports, spending time with family and friends and traveling to Europe or getting away to New Zealand’s own Queenstown.
Favourite Product
For Alesha, choosing just one product is difficult as she uses so many. She uses Bee Pollen to keep her immune system in check and energy levels up throughout winter, she always has Manuka Oil in her first aid kit to use on both two-legged and four-legged family members and loves the Royal Skin Range. She is also a big fan of the Propolis Throat Spray.
Interesting fact
Alesha was born on the same day as her sister... but they’re not twins! The coincidence runs in her family.
Ruth Chen
China Marketing Specialist & Queenstown Retailer
Ruth always has a big smile on her face which is perfect for spreading joy and love at Happy Valley’s Queenstown store. Before joining the Happy Valley family, Ruth worked for tourism company where she gained marketing and sale skills. She is at her happiest when spending time with close friends and families. When Ruth is not at the HIVE, she enjoys 5k running, hiking and music. If she wasn’t at Happy Valley, Ruth would either go back to university for further study, or go traveling and experience different cultures and food.
Favourite product
Lemon honey for its very strong lemon taste; and bee pollen with cereals or breakfast smoothies for general well-being.
Interesting fact
Ruth’s birthday is on Youth Day in China.
Our quality system
Happiness in a jar. When it comes to real mānuka honey, quality means purity, and vice-versa. And since quality is what we’re all about, we settle for nothing less than the highest standards possible, from start to finish.
Land
Regular soil testing, careful site selection and organic growing practices—just a few things we do to ensure the cleanest soil around our mānuka trees.
Beekeeping
We maintain our own hives, and use full quality systems to track hive health. Not only that, we have total transparency of the bees’ journey from hive to nectar.
Production
If you want something done well, do it yourself. We do, and we do! So all honey extraction, manufacturing, and processing is done by us and us only, in our very own factories (which, by the way, have some pretty fancy accreditations). That’s how we can guarantee each step of the our process meets our high standards.
Independent Certification & Testing
Happy Valley Mānuka Honey is genuine and true to the label — and you can trust that’s true, because we’re a member of the UMF association. That means our honey is repeatedly tested to guarantee it meets UMF-rated purity and quality, as well as our family standard of pure happiness!
Our land & bees
Honey is a natural product created by the joining of nature and it’s environment, making the land and bees our most precious resource.
Our Bee Keeping team consists of over 30 staff who are out in the field daily and the caretakers of our relationship with the land and the bees. They operate out of the Hawkes Bay where we have a state of the art extraction facility and process our honey from across New Zealand.
Melita Beekeeping manage the relationships we have with our group owned land, our land partners and responsible for the hive management.
To find out more about the importance of the land and our bees to our process, visit www.nzhoneygroup.com
Our process
Our products are genuine and authentic. We manage the full process, ensuring we know the quality of our product from the beginning the the end. We own our own land and Mānuka plantations, with 30 Bee Keepers out in the field placing our hives in natural environments. Extraction and Production teams are based in our own factory. We even package your honey up ourselves, selling it to you in our retail stores or sending it to arrive on your doorstep. We do it all in-house with our team.
We are family and we like to think we have a unique process.
Land
>No. Honey is one of the very few food sources that does not spoil. However, it does need to be stored correctly otherwise you will find your honey returning to its natural state — where it goes lumpy and surgery. This is perfectly normal, as when it’s in the hive it goes from liquid to thick and sugary depending on the temperature.
We recommend storing your honey under 19.5 degrees Celsius in a cool dark place.
All of our products have a Best Before date printed as we have to comply with Food Labelling guidelines. In the case of our UMF Mānuka range, the BB date is to ensure your honey still meets the claims on pack by the BB date.
All of our well-being products have a BB date and we recommend you consume by that date for maximum effectiveness.
All of our skincare has a 12 months after opening BB date- so we recommend that once the product is opened, it is used within 12 months.
Our happy bees
>No. Honey is one of the very few food sources that does not spoil. However, it does need to be stored correctly otherwise you will find your honey returning to its natural state — where it goes lumpy and surgery. This is perfectly normal, as when it’s in the hive it goes from liquid to thick and sugary depending on the temperature.
We recommend storing your honey under 19.5 degrees Celsius in a cool dark place.
All of our products have a Best Before date printed as we have to comply with Food Labelling guidelines. In the case of our UMF Mānuka range, the BB date is to ensure your honey still meets the claims on pack by the BB date.
All of our well-being products have a BB date and we recommend you consume by that date for maximum effectiveness.
All of our skincare has a 12 months after opening BB date- so we recommend that once the product is opened, it is used within 12 months.
Sustainable happiness
>No. Honey is one of the very few food sources that does not spoil. However, it does need to be stored correctly otherwise you will find your honey returning to its natural state — where it goes lumpy and surgery. This is perfectly normal, as when it’s in the hive it goes from liquid to thick and sugary depending on the temperature.
We recommend storing your honey under 19.5 degrees Celsius in a cool dark place.
All of our products have a Best Before date printed as we have to comply with Food Labelling guidelines. In the case of our UMF Mānuka range, the BB date is to ensure your honey still meets the claims on pack by the BB date.
All of our well-being products have a BB date and we recommend you consume by that date for maximum effectiveness.
All of our skincare has a 12 months after opening BB date- so we recommend that once the product is opened, it is used within 12 months.
Extraction process
>No. Honey is one of the very few food sources that does not spoil. However, it does need to be stored correctly otherwise you will find your honey returning to its natural state — where it goes lumpy and surgery. This is perfectly normal, as when it’s in the hive it goes from liquid to thick and sugary depending on the temperature.
We recommend storing your honey under 19.5 degrees Celsius in a cool dark place.
All of our products have a Best Before date printed as we have to comply with Food Labelling guidelines. In the case of our UMF Mānuka range, the BB date is to ensure your honey still meets the claims on pack by the BB date.
All of our well-being products have a BB date and we recommend you consume by that date for maximum effectiveness.
All of our skincare has a 12 months after opening BB date- so we recommend that once the product is opened, it is used within 12 months.
Production process
>No. Honey is one of the very few food sources that does not spoil. However, it does need to be stored correctly otherwise you will find your honey returning to its natural state — where it goes lumpy and surgery. This is perfectly normal, as when it’s in the hive it goes from liquid to thick and sugary depending on the temperature.
We recommend storing your honey under 19.5 degrees Celsius in a cool dark place.
All of our products have a Best Before date printed as we have to comply with Food Labelling guidelines. In the case of our UMF Mānuka range, the BB date is to ensure your honey still meets the claims on pack by the BB date.
All of our well-being products have a BB date and we recommend you consume by that date for maximum effectiveness.
All of our skincare has a 12 months after opening BB date- so we recommend that once the product is opened, it is used within 12 months.
Getting our product to the customer
>No. Honey is one of the very few food sources that does not spoil. However, it does need to be stored correctly otherwise you will find your honey returning to its natural state — where it goes lumpy and surgery. This is perfectly normal, as when it’s in the hive it goes from liquid to thick and sugary depending on the temperature.
We recommend storing your honey under 19.5 degrees Celsius in a cool dark place.
All of our products have a Best Before date printed as we have to comply with Food Labelling guidelines. In the case of our UMF Mānuka range, the BB date is to ensure your honey still meets the claims on pack by the BB date.
All of our well-being products have a BB date and we recommend you consume by that date for maximum effectiveness.
All of our skincare has a 12 months after opening BB date- so we recommend that once the product is opened, it is used within 12 months.
Our partnerships
UMF Association — Licence #2024
As a UMF Member we uphold the quality measures and testing regimes required to be use the premium quality and grading system on our Manuka Products. Happy Valley pays an annual licence fees and levys that helps fund the work of the association.
The UMF Honey Association oversees all use of the UMF quality trademark and supports licensees and consumers through a comprehensive science and research programme.
UMF Association — Licence #2024
As a UMF Member we uphold the quality measures and testing regimes required to be use the premium quality and grading system on our Manuka Products. Happy Valley pays an annual licence fees and levys that helps fund the work of the association.
The UMF Honey Association oversees all use of the UMF quality trademark and supports licensees and consumers through a comprehensive science and research programme.
UMF Association — Licence #2024
As a UMF Member we uphold the quality measures and testing regimes required to be use the premium quality and grading system on our Manuka Products. Happy Valley pays an annual licence fees and levys that helps fund the work of the association.
The UMF Honey Association oversees all use of the UMF quality trademark and supports licensees and consumers through a comprehensive science and research programme.
UMF Association — Licence #2024
As a UMF Member we uphold the quality measures and testing regimes required to be use the premium quality and grading system on our Manuka Products. Happy Valley pays an annual licence fees and levys that helps fund the work of the association.
The UMF Honey Association oversees all use of the UMF quality trademark and supports licensees and consumers through a comprehensive science and research programme.
UMF Association — Licence #2024
As a UMF Member we uphold the quality measures and testing regimes required to be use the premium quality and grading system on our Manuka Products. Happy Valley pays an annual licence fees and levys that helps fund the work of the association.
The UMF Honey Association oversees all use of the UMF quality trademark and supports licensees and consumers through a comprehensive science and research programme.
UMF Association — Licence #2024
As a UMF Member we uphold the quality measures and testing regimes required to be use the premium quality and grading system on our Manuka Products. Happy Valley pays an annual licence fees and levys that helps fund the work of the association.
The UMF Honey Association oversees all use of the UMF quality trademark and supports licensees and consumers through a comprehensive science and research programme.