Heilala Vanilla secures funding for international expansion

Heilala Vanilla has signed a deal in which the New Zealand Venture Investment Fund (NZVIF) and Enterprise Angels BOP – a Tauranga-based consortium – will invest into the company. This involves 12 individual investors including Ross McCallum (founder of Kapiti Cheeses and Kapiti Ice-Cream) and Geoff Ross (founder of vodka brand 42 Below).

The deal will provide the capital injection Heilala Vanilla needs to substantially expand its business and ramp up its current exports to Australia, the United States and South East Asia. New opportunities in the US, UK and Japan will also be explored in 2012.

Heilala Vanilla’s sales and marketing manager, Jennifer Boggiss, says the company’s aim is to become a globally-recognised brand which professional chefs, bartenders and food lovers around the world will seek out.

“New Zealand has been a great testing ground for our new products and we are confident we can achieve strong growth in Australia,” she says. “We’ve been exporting there for two years now and in 2011 we gained listing with Thomas Dux (the Woolworths gourmet food retail chain) ranging the full product range. The plan for 2012 is to focus on boosting our sales and marketing resources across the Tasman.”

The company will establish warehouse facilities on both the US West Coast and in New York in the near future.

Heilala Vanilla is the only company world-wide that grows, processes and sells its own vanilla products, having total ownership of the supply chain.

Heilala Vanilla’s vanilla beans are harvested on the Vava’u Islands in northern Tonga and sent to New Zealand for processing and packaging.

The NZVIF was established by the New Zealand government in 2002, to help build a vibrant venture capital market in New Zealand. Enterprise Angels BOP is the 13th partner in NZVIF’s Seed Co-Investment Fund and the first in the Bay of Plenty.