Knowledge of noni’s properties and how to tend and use the plant, has been passed down from generation to generation in the Cook Islands and was predominantly cultivated for personal and family use.
The benefits of noni have long been known but only recently proven by science. Brad Stafford saw an opportunity to expand noni production in the Cook Islands to service the growing global demand and in 2001 established Cook Islands Noni Marketing. Cook Island noni juice has grown to become the country’s largest agricultural export product, with over 250 tonnes of pure organic noni juice exported each year.
A strong selling proposition for Cook Island noni is that that it is organically grown and traditionally processed extracting a high-quality juice with no additives. In 2017, PTI Australia worked closely with Cook Islands Noni Marketing to ensure they were able to become organically certified and recognised as an organic product in their key markets of Australia, China and Japan, where organic certification ensures demand for their product.
“We are thankful to PTI Australia for their ongoing support and enabling us to get our organic certification. In the global market we are a relatively small operation, it’s a very competitive market and it is vital to capitalise on your points of difference. For us, that’s organic certification. Without it there would not be a demand for our product in our export markets.”
All phases of Cook Islands Noni Marketing production occur in the Cook Islands. This ensures the benefits of export are directly reinvested in the Cook Islands through the creation of employment and the development of infrastructure such as their bottling plant in Titikaveka.
Cook Islands Noni works with over 40 noni farmers. Seeing firsthand that many landowners and growers were getting older and many were without family support to tend their farms and land, a new initiative was created to encourage sustainable farming and land use. Brad now works in partnership with landowners in a sharecropping arrangement. Cook Islands Noni Marketing looks after the trees and does the mowing in return for a half share in the crop, giving the growers a passive income as well as ensuring that their land is well cared for.
