Small Business: Untapping the potential of Aotea’s native flora

Aotea founder Tama Toki is on a mission to tap into the unrealised potential of Aotearoa's native flora like Kawakawa and Kūmarahou. Photo / Supplied

Tama Toki, founder of Aotea Made, talks to Tom Raynel about how mātauranga Māori thinking inspires his business, and how combining science with the local knowledge on Aotea Great Barrier Island is key for him.

What is Aotea Made?

Aotea is our namesake and it’s the Māori name for Great Barrier Island, it’s where I grew up. I grew up in the bush on our papakāinga there in the Maori community. Naturally, especially in the 90s, growing up in isolation, you’re just naturally a bit more exposed to other ways of doing things. Our business is a vessel for those tenets of healing. Aotea is a pure expression of our upbringing there and the business that we run is informed by that upbringing.

I understand you are in the midst of a transition?

Yeah, we’re actually really excited. Our aspiration has moved from where we are in skincare and moved more into the biopharmaceutical or biotherapeutic space. That is just underscoring some of our anecdotal histories with more efficacy and more of a scientific lens.

It’s public knowledge, but there is a plant agent in Kawakawa called myristicin, and it’s extremely anti-inflammatory. Traditionally it was used to treat eczema, psoriasis and various other forms of inflammation. We’ve done chemical profiling on our products, so we can say with confidence that they can be used to treat skin irritations like those I mentioned.

The brand is going through a bit of a facelift and we are changing our packaging to reflect the more clinical approach. For example, on our Kawakawa balm, we’ve got a grid-like design style that allows us to list the plant chemicals from Kawakawa to mānuka oil. The biodiversity here in New Zealand is very unique and continuing the look into the underlying properties in our meta flora, I think we’re kind of just scratching the service.

Aotea Rongoā Māori products are made on Great Barrier Island from local ingredients. Photo / Supplied

How will native flora on Aotea be used for biopharmaceuticals?

The first limb to it is getting a handle on the chemical properties of the flora we use. One is Kūmarahou and we’re still doing research there, which is really exciting. There are some plant agents in that product that are significantly anti-viral.

So the first item is to get a good handle on the plant actives, then wrapping around those actives is the extraction methods, the chemical profiling, getting consistency and then essentially building a product range out of it. The test for a biopharma product or a biotherapeutic is tied significantly to having robust research and development around it.

Being Māori as well, it’s important to be done correctly and if there is any commercialisation out of it that the halo effects are enjoyed or there are benefactors in the community where I grew up. So, trying to get all those things to hold hands is really important.

Tama Toki's business Aotea was inspired by his grandmother's traditional Māori herbal remedies. Photo / Supernormal, Supplied

How does Mātauranga Māori inform the business?

Mātauranga Māori is kind of a catch-all, in some ways. What I mean by that is we have to be very willing to look at resourcefulness, and that is quite consistent with principles of Kaitiakitanga or Māori knowledge and Māori systems. I think in many ways, Mātauranga Māori is the kind of Northern Star, it sets a framework that we can work with.

We’ve won various awards for sustainability and it’s part of the reason we’ve been picked up by Air New Zealand in terms of supplying to them because we’ve got a circular business model. What I mean by that is we grow all our flora for our range. One of the tenets of sustainability is to use everything you can within that production cycle. If we do some distillation or some mānuka extraction, all the biomass left over is used as mulch. Another example is that we have a reticulated water system, so there’s no water loss as it’s quite a water-intensive process and we power the whole entire operation with solar.

So mātauranga Māori is involved directly with the products we make, but it also extends and helps us govern how we run our business.

Tama Toki grew up on Aotea Great Barrier, and the local knowledge passed down through generations inspires his products, unleashing the native flora of Aotearoa. Photo / Guy Coombes

Where do you see the business going forward?

I think in the next few years we really want to grab hold of those exciting opportunities in offshore markets. We make everything in-house ourselves so we can’t go to a big factory and say, “Hey, this is an order can you make it for us?”. That’s been hard because you’re building a business that you want to be able to scale, but you have to get all those mechanics in the back end ready for that. Over the next few years, we’ve been trying hard to get that sorted.

Over the next six to 12 months, we should have a robust platform that will allow us to really enter these markets in significant ways. We’re also working hard in science, ideally in the next few years “the innovation” can come through, so all that stuff is really exciting. But getting that personality, that kind of scientific DNA coming through, we think it’s important not just for business, but also philosophically.

What would be your advice to other budding entrepreneurs?

It sounds kind of cliche but I think it’s really true. Like anything you’ve just got to keep going and know why you’re doing what you’re doing, which just makes it easier. Our business is so value-driven and what encourages us to keep going is coming back to those values.

Tom Raynel is a multimedia business journalist for the Herald, covering small business and retail.