When, as a child, Kiri Dell spent time on her ancestral whenua (land) in Ruatoria, a small Ngāti Porou town in the Gisborne Region, kānuka was everywhere. A hardy, scrubby tree, it was mostly used for firewood, so while it didn’t have much monetary value, Dell associated it with warmth, cooking and food.

Now Dell, a senior lecturer in management and international business at Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland, and Saeid Baroutian, an associate professor of chemical and materials engineering at the same university, are working to transform kānuka from Ruatoria into high-value products and tangible benefits to the community.

Their enterprise is breaking ground as both a tikanga Māori business and one based on university research and technological innovation. To achieve its objectives, it’s unique in its very structure.

“Māori landowners have typically been the last ones to be valued in the supply chain,” says Dell, who is also the director of the University’s Postgraduate Diploma in Business – Māori Development. “We wanted to come up with a model that would return value to landowners and also reward entrepreneurs.”

The solution, arrived at through lots of kōrero with the community and some legal advice from UniServices, the University’s research application and commercialisation company, was to create an organisational structure composed of a charitable trust, a company holding the intellectual property, and Māori land entities.

Nuka Charitable Trust, a name that shortens kānuka, is a not-for-profit trust with the overarching mandate to deliver benefits to the community. It will maintain control over the brand, marketing and story, while local land entities will maintain control over the whenua in Ruatoria.

 Although Nuka is still in the relatively early stages of starting up, the seeds of the project were sown back in 2015, when Dell was doing her PhD. That’s when she and Baroutian met at a research ideas event at the University.

“Kiri told me about all these underutilised resources in the Māori lands of the East Cape and we started talking about developing solutions to better utilise them,” says Baroutian, who is today a director of Ngā Ara Whetū: Centre for Climate, Biodiversity and Society, the Circular Innovations Research Centre (CIRCUIT), and the Sustainable Resource Recovery postgraduate programme.

The pair secured seed funding from the UniServices-run University of Auckland Inventors’ Fund, as well as from their respective faculties, and started developing and fine-tuning ideas. Presenting to the expert advisors on a Return On Science investment committee also helped.

The research and development process was intertwined with the relationship-building process. Dell and Baroutian visited Dell’s ancestral lands and met with her whānau and other community members.

While Baroutian led the science and technology, Dell built bridges between the community and the University. Early in the project, she brought a group of Māori landowners to the University, showed them around and held extensive hui. Later, a group of University and UniServices staff went to Ruatoria, where they stayed at the local marae and met with community members.

“Building engagement was a step-by-step process,” says Baroutian. “We needed that time to understand each other, especially for me to learn the culture and to build relationships with Kiri and her whānau.”

Another important principle for Dell and Baroutian was to build a sustainable business that would not only tread lightly on the whenua but give back to the ngahere (forest).

“We started by understanding the resources and the mātauranga Māori involved in the application of these resources,” says Baroutian. “Then there was laboratory characterisation – understanding the health benefits and unique properties – and developing a process. Actually, two processes, because we developed two healthy, sustainable products based on two technologies.”

One of the products is liquid smoke, which can be added to foods ranging from cheese to mussels.

“It has a unique, pleasant aroma and flavour,” says Baroutian. “It can also protect food products against degradation and enhance shelf life.”

Traditional smoking involves burning wood in the presence of oxygen, which creates toxic and carcinogenic compounds, notably polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Nuka’s process involves burning kānuka wood chips at high temperatures, in the absence of oxygen, which prevents the formation of these toxic compounds. The smoke is converted into a liquid product with an aroma that reminds Dell of hāngī.

The company will give back to the community as well as the whenua. 

“The community will gain employment; an enhanced relationship with the ngahere; exposure to and engagement with the science and innovation system; and capability development around entrepreneurship and innovation,” says Dell.

The business will eventually employ about 15 people, which is significant in a community of less than 800 where much of the working-age population leaves town, says Dell, who has moved to Ruatoria for reasons including being closer to her whānau and advancing the business as well as her research. 

“I can see families struggling here, so it’s in my own interest to make my community better.” 

“We’re not driven by money. Our aim is to deliver impact,” says Baroutian. “I’m involved in multiple projects, but to me, this one is special because of the relationships – it’s like working with friends and family.”

What’s the advice the pair would give to others thinking of embarking on ventures involving collaboration between Māori and non-Māori communities?