From Barrier beekeeper to global wellness pioneer: Alan Bougen's 50-year journey with Comvita

NZ Herald

04-07-2025

In the rugged beauty of Aotea/Great Barrier Island in the early 1970s, a young Alan Bougen stood waist-deep in a creek, covered in bee stings but grinning through the pain. He'd just opened two abandoned beehives with no smoker, homemade veils, and zero experience.
'The bees were angry,' he recalls with a chuckle. 'Lynda and her friend got chased across a paddock, screaming. I ended up in that creek, stung to bits, but in complete awe of those creatures.'
That chaotic moment marked the start of Comvita, a company that would grow from a backyard passion to the world's largest producer of Mānuka honey, now celebrating its 50th anniversary as Bougen is inducted into the New Zealand Business Hall of Fame.
Bougen's journey began about as far from corporate boardrooms as one can get. In the late 1960s, travels through North Africa, Europe and the west coast of the United States exposed him to emerging concepts like clean living and the natural foods movement.
A jar of raw honey in a US health food store in 1971 sparked a revelation. 'It was untouched, golden goodness,' he says. 'I thought, 'This is the perfect food.' I'd slather it on wholegrain bread with peanut butter after surfing. That was breakfast and lunch most days.'
On their return to New Zealand, he and Lynda settled on Great Barrier, living off the land amid regenerating kauri and Mānuka forests. There, they found those fateful hives. 'I'd been buying 60-pound tins of Mānuka honey from a local beekeeper,' Bougen says. 'Now I had a shot at making my own.'
With guidance from local beekeeper Les Blackwell, Bougen learned the rhythms of the hive. But it was a small orange pot of honey emulsion, used to heal a horse's wound, that changed everything. 'That blew my mind,' he says. 'It opened up a whole new world – honey not just for nutrition, but for healing.'
Here's where fate intervenes. An intrigued Bougen wrote to the PO box on the jar, addressing a letter to 'Dear Sir or Madam'. Within days the reply came from Claude Stratford, a 65-year-old herbalist and beekeeper in Paengaroa. 'Dear Alan, you could be an answer to prayer. Come quickly.'
If that differs wildly from how business is done in the digital age, so do the next steps. Then 25, Bougen hitchhiked down to the Bay of Plenty to meet. 'We talked for hours over herbal tea and honey,' he recalls. 'Claude was obsessed with health and bees, just like me. There was an instant connection.'
Together, they founded Comvita – Latin for 'with life and vitality' – in 1975, driven by a shared vision of health through nature. Starting with 12 hives in Te Puke, they scaled to over 2400, exporting honey to the UK and bee pollen to Japan. 'Claude was endlessly curious,' Bougen says.
'He'd pore over health magazines, always looking for the next way to make something better.' Their early years were scrappy, funded by honey and kiwifruit pollination. Lessons were learned, sometimes daily. Comvita wasn't just a bee company, offering over 85 products, from wheat germ to herbal teas. But, as Bougen notes, 'Bees were always the secret sauce. That's where Comvita found its identity.'
Comvita faced significant early challenges, particularly in the 1980s. 'We were in a pretty tough environment in New Zealand,' Bougen recalls, citing high interest rates and the 1987 stock market crash. 'Interest rates were through the roof… times were hard.' Internal struggles, including shareholder disputes, added to the pressure, but Bougen's persistence kept the company afloat.
However, a turning point came in the form of two sources – one likely, the other highly unlikely. Professor Peter Molan's research on Mānuka honey's antimicrobial properties brought science to the balm applied to a horse's foreleg all those years ago.
'When Molan's work hit, I knew: 'This is the future. This honey is therapeutic.'' Comvita co-created the UMF™ trademark, launched medical-grade Mānuka wound care products, and took the honey global at the 2000 Apimondia congress, handing out 20,000 sample packs. 'We were the first to bring UMF™ Mānuka to Singapore, to UK health food stores,' Bougen says. 'We just kept going.'
Far less likely an impetus came from the Chernobyl meltdown and the threat of a nuclear cloud impacting health across Western Europe. Almost overnight, demand for uncontaminated therapeutic Southern Hemisphere honey went through the roof. 'That really underscored that the world needed what we had,' says Bougen, admitting it is a little on the weird side that an event so far away and completely antithetical to New Zealand's 'nuclear free' stance had such an impact.
Today, while Comvita exports to over 20 countries, with annual revenues exceeding $200 million, Bougen says the underlying principles of the company haven't changed. 'It's purpose and people and seeking out the right people who believe in the vision and direction of what we're doing.'
His induction into the New Zealand Business Hall of Fame, announced by Young Enterprise Trust for the August 2025 gala, celebrates this legacy. Despite his success, Bougen remains humble, a hint of his surfing days still shining through. 'But it's not just about me – it's about Claude, the bees, and everyone who built Comvita.'
Sustainability remains his passion, and there's more than a twinkle in his eye as he tells of the thousands of hectares of land planted with native Mānuka, reflecting his vision for a greener future. 'I imagine my great-grandchildren walking through a vibrant forest we helped plant, full of bees and kiwis calling at night,' he says.
As Comvita marks 50 years, Bougen's story – from a stung-up novice to a global wellness pioneer – embodies resilience, curiosity, and care. 'We didn't set out to build a company,' he says with a smile. 'We wanted to live well and help others do the same. And I suppose you could say the bees showed us the way.'