A company has received funding from the government to develop a pine pollen industry in Aotearoa.
Bio Gold believes it could rake in $4 billion worth of revenue from the Asian market, where the supplement has been used for thousands of years in traditional medicine.
But the new buzz about it is the discovery of naturally occurring testosterone in the New Zealand species of pine.
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Bio Gold founder Carl Meyer tells Jesse Mulligan he became interested in pine pollen three years ago while researching plants that had the potential to be high value exports.
“I was sort of doing research on a whole range of plants looking for something that was high value and could help people’s health and that was already here in New Zealand.
“When I read about pine pollen, my jaw dropped, to see what it could do and also the fact that no-one had picked up on it here in New Zealand.”
A researcher in the 1970s had already picked up the bio-identical human hormone of testosterone in a US species of the plant, Meyer says.
“We got some scientists here in New Zealand to do a test on our pollen, to see if it also came up.
“They were also quite sceptical at first, they were going, well, I don’t if you’re going to find that, we’re using a human or animal reference sample but they called me up and they were just fascinated and very surprised that they did in fact find it.”
There’s already a thriving market for pine pollen in Asia, where extensive studies have been done on it, he says.
“But the proof really is in the benefits that people are getting in terms of their health and we’re getting great feedback as well from people here in New Zealand on our early products too.
“We can also see potential for it in sports and fitness industry … even skincare products, it’s got benefits for the skin both for when you consume it but also rubbing it on the skin as well.”
He cautions the supplements do not substitute a healthy diet or exercise, and they hope to have more proof of the benefits when they conduct their own clinical studies.
“We’re using a different species of pine to what’s used overseas, and we’ve got of course a different climate and UV properties, different soil.
“So the research so far looks quite promising in terms of the difference in terms of vitamins and minerals and amino acids and the different levels of the bioactive compounds we’re looking at but we’re still doing more research into that.”
Harvesting the pollen remains a secret of the trade, but Meyer describes it as a fairly labour-intensive process which they do by hand at a Ngāi Tahu forestry south of Kaikōura.
“We do encourage anyone that is involved with health companies or forestry groups or would like to invest or even just try the products, to check us out at our website.”