Venture focus:

Blending aquaculture and conservation to turn malnourished kina into a culinary delicacy and enable ocean habitat restoration.

Global solutions in New Zealand context

Achieving profitability achieves lasting impact. The truth is, it is unsustainable to rely on grants, donations or public funds - as these are finite. A commercial operation is a more sustainable approach in the long-term. We look to identify opportunities where we can create significant social and environmental impact while also creating a commercial opportunity that provides a return on investment. Recognising that many of the solutions to environmental challenges have been successfully developed and deployed elsewhere, our work often originates with a concept or practice we’ve observed being successfully used internationally and adapting it to our unique context.

The core focuses
Market, product and customer
To help accelerate a future Kinanomics commercial operation by providing guidance on target markets and customers, along with preferences for kina-based uni products. Work involved onshore and offshore quality evaluation and brand recommendations.
Processing & freight
Developing processing protocols and recommendations for enhanced uni processing, packaging recommendations for transport and presentation, and freight logistics recommendations from New Zealand to our target markets.
Roe enhancement
Five enhancement trials between February 2022 and April 2024 designed to assess the impact of the time of harvest and the kina’s reproductive cycle on growth and flavour. We also wanted to quantify the variables between and within locations and the impact of feeding volumes on enhancement performance.
Haversting & Restoration
The delivery of a kelp harvesting protocol for kina fishing that promotes the highest probability of kelp recovery in Aotearoa New Zealand. We recommended pathways to attract finance to support kelp recovery and monitoring protocol - to substantiate kelp recovery claims.

The support

The kinanomics project initiators EnviroStrat thank the Ministry for Primary Industries’ Sustainable Food and Fibre Futures Fund for their support to help fund our Kinanomics pilot. We also thank New Zealand Trade and Enterprise' Taipei Office for their support to facilitate our offshore market evaluation.

 

Alongside EnviroStrat, project oversight for the pilot came from Urchinomics and Ngati Porou Seafoods. Specialist customer evaluation expertise was provided by the team at Forward Insight. Specialist brand development expertise was provided by Ben Percival. Wild product harvest support was assisted by the team at Sea Urchin New Zealand based in Whitianga, and Ivory Pacific Limited of Nelson.