A single kilogram of saffron can cost between $16,000 and $26,000, but historically the market has been dominated by growers in the Middle East, particularly in Iran.
A few years back Geoff and Jude Slater decided New Zealand could be a good place to start up a boutique industry, so they've set up shop on their four-hectare property in Eyrewell in Canterbury.
Photo: AFP
It came after Jude had a serious stroke and Geoff was on the look-out for a high value crop he could grow on a smaller property – after some googling he stumbled on saffron.
Saffron derived from crocus flowers – the valuable part are the three stigma in each flower.
“Canterbury has the perfect conditions for saffron with our hot summers and cold winters and our frosts, and free-draining soils here in north Canterbury it was ideal,” Geoff says.
The couple are now into their fourth year of production with around 100,000 crocus corm (a kind of tuber) in the ground.
Saffron may well be valuable but it is hugely labour-intensive to harvest. Geoff says it takes about 170,000 flowers to yield a kilo of saffron.
“There’s a lot of work in picking the flowers, each morning we go out and pick the flowers and the process starts again the next morning, after picking the flowers we take them inside to process.”
Then the flowers are dried.
“After picking we put it through a dehydrator and that brings the moisture content down to where we need it.”
Geoff says they sent their saffron off for international testing and it came back with a premium grade 1 rating, which is the highest you can get.
The plan is now to develop ancillary products such as teas and to sell direct to the high-end restaurant market.
