Accolades for ginger farmer's sweet tale of success
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Young Chinese immigrant Calvin Qiu had no farming background when he started his small ginger farm at Pacific Harbour in 1997. All he had was a tremendous appetite to learn and succeed as a ginger farmer.
And about two decades later he has grown to be one of the country's biggest exporters of the much sought after spice.
As early as 2003, his enterprise, Kaiming Agro, received organic certification.
Through Kaiming Agro Mr Qiu began selling only raw ginger as a product, but he saw quite early that value-adding was the way to grow faster.
In 2006 he started exporting semi-processed ginger and in the following years, added products such as sushi ginger and crystallised ginger (branded "Zing") building steadily to today's impressive portfolio of 40 different ginger products including pureed, glace, and ginger juice, besides others.
Through an MOU signed between Pacific Islands Trade and Invest (PT&I) and the European Union-supported IACT (Increasing Agricultural Commodity Trade) in July 2015, Mr Qiu was connected to popular New Zealand chocolate maker Whittaker's.
The meeting resulted in a trial shipment followed by regular export sales as Whittaker's launched its new flavour 'Fijian Ginger and Kerikeri Mandarin' in the New Zealand market in 2016. The flavour was one of its new range of artisan chocolates available countrywide.
The Whittaker's deal was a sweetener for Kaiming Agro's ginger exports: It has been able to establish new deals and increase existing orders by 20 per cent.
"This is an excellent outcome for Kaiming Agro Processing. We congratulate Calvin and his team on the success of establishing new business relationships from this mission," said Joe Fuavao, the PT&I trade development manager told Pacific Periscope
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