Our history

Hunter-Reilly was created in the winter of 2002 when Stu and Jan Ferguson were given the opportunity to purchase hives from the multi-generational Simmonds’ family honey business.

The timing was perfect for Jan’’s father to retire.

Stu and Jan’s belief was in a company that resembles a living entity with its own life path, hence they named the company after Hunter and Reilly which they planned to use for their first two children. It turns out that starting and running a business was a lot like raising children, so it was totally appropriate.

Jan’s grandfather, ‘Pop’ Noland Simmonds started the honey business back in the 1930’s to provide supplementary income to milking cows and subsequently to help the family survive the financially challenging times of World War II. Alan Simmonds (Jan’s father) and his brother took the business over in 1965 and slowly grew the business until it was the largest commercial operation in the Southern Wairarapa. At that time Alan and his brother had 2,000 hives and sold packed honey to supermarkets in the lower half of New Zealand’s North Island.

Alan took sole charge of the hives in the early 1970s.

In the early 2000’s Mānuka honey research began to generate interest outside of the beekeeping community with many business-minded people jumping into the industry and large commercial operations springing up seemingly overnight.

One of the larger honey companies ‘Mānuka Health’ started extraction in the Simmonds honey extraction facility at that time. The pace of change, research and ever-increasing compliance requirements required innovation, research and the ability to think outside “the ways things were always done”.

Stu and Jan moved back into the family home with their young family. Jan took on the role of Extraction Shed Compliance and Quality Requirements Manager, and Stu took on the role of Head Beekeeping Manager, Research and Development, Sales, Marketing and Exporting Lead.

The new generation of Simmonds beekeeper’s related family had an engineering and product development background, with medicinal insight and could not believe that the industry was so underdeveloped.

Prior to this, a product development design and manufacturing retail business Hive Doctor was created and coincided with varroa arriving in New Zealand. The timing was perfect and business grew exponentially but put pressure on the extraction facility and the core business of beekeeping had to take a back seat.

In 2015 Alan started to consider retirement age at the age of 75. Looking to slow down, Stu and Jan made the decision to sell the Hive Doctor and to focus solely on the family-based beekeeping business.

The honey extraction facility was given a major upgrade to allow it to cater for up to 300 tonnes of honey a season, which can now be bulk batched, filtered, dehydrated, blended and refined/cleaned using innovative ultrasonic processing - a first for New Zealand.

Computer system quality control was integrated into both the beekeeping and extraction business allowing for paddock-to-plate traceability without reliance on paper-based systems.

A key area of focus for the business was to incorporate low-temperature processing and to treat the honey as a living food whilst keeping as much of the unique goodness of raw honey as possible by using coarse filters and cold processing techniques.

The future looks bright with an exponential focus on the research and development of unique New Zealand honey - actively ensuring Hunter-Reilly’s primary goal of exceeding their customer’s expectations and providing a product that improves individual
well-being.