December 12, 2017
Kanuka plan healing the land
Hikurangi Enterprises is looking at ways to heal the land while healing people.
It has lined up a $240,000 grant from the ministry for Primary Industries Erosion Control Funding Programme for its bioactives subsidiary, which makes health products from kanuka oil.
Managing director Panapa Ehau says it already uses wild kanuka, trimming branches and steaming out the oil.
The grant will help it explore other extraction methods and also look at planting kanuka on erosion-prone land as part of a larger project to reforest the East Coast region.
"Not only are we using wild stands but we are able to heal the whenua by planting more kanuka and other natives and working with a number of other institutions and organisations so we can increase the amount of material or resource that is available but also heal the land at the same time," Mr Ehau says.
Finding economic ways to plant more native plants is better for the land than putting it in pines.
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