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New Zealanders Offered Sweet Investment

New Zealanders Offered Sweet Investment

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 23 February 2017

New Zealanders are being invited to invest money for honey in a revolutionary hive sharing initiative launching today.

Whanganui-based Canaan Honey has launched a PledgeMe crowdsourcing campaign for investors looking to get a sweet return: a lifetime supply of honey.

A launch party last night saw the season’s first harvest of honey with a 3kg bonus honey offered to the first 10 signups.

Hive Share lets backers around New Zealand become beehive owners, without the fuss of having to look after the hive.

“They buy the hive, but we look after it and give them a return in honey for their investment,” explains Canaan Honey partner Michael Brandon.

Investors have the option of either paying $920 for a hive or $460 for half of a hive. A full hive yields a return-on-investment of 7 kilograms of honey each year after the first year.

“That works out to being a 12% per annum tax free return,” Brandon says.

“It’s a much better investment than any bank or financial institution will give you. And as the Native Indians say: ‘you cannot eat money.’ But you can eat honey.”

He says while similar models exist overseas, this is the first hive share of its kind in New Zealand.

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Michael’s father John Brandon has been beekeeping for more than 35 years. Michael remembers helping his father as a child and decided to leave his Auckland IT career last year to join his father in beekeeping.

“Canaan Honey is a family business and it’s lovely having Michael back by my side to help me into retirement” John says.

“Beekeeping is an ancient and traditional craft, and that’s lovely, but our business does need to modernise. It’s great to have Michael’s innovative and tech-savvy mindset to bring the business into a new era and make honey an easy investment for all kiwis.”

Michael came up with the idea for the hive share initiative as he thought about the timeshare and retirement village systems in which people buy an asset that’s managed by others.

“Hive Share means we can sell a hive, retain management rights, and give a sweet return in honey.”

“We can then divide those hives to grow the business faster than if we sold those hives outright,” he says.

Hive Share builds the beehives, breeds the queens and professionally manages the hives. It pays the hive levies, harvests the honey and packs and sends it to the customer. Unlike other investments, buyers pay no income tax.

“We are offering people a chance to be part of the burgeoning honey industry, as well as a chance to learn something more about the incredible honey bee: a miracle of nature,” Michael says.

The hives are sited in dedicated hive share apiaries in the Whanganui area. If they don’t produce enough honey, Canaan Honey will add in honey from its other apiaries.

Hive Share is offering up to 100 beehives and hopes to raise $92,000 through its PledgeMe campaign.

For more information or to purchase a Hive Share, go to the PledgeMe campaign here.

ENDS


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