Manu's Memos

About

Manu Caddie (Ngāti Pūkenga, Waitaha-ā-Hei, Ngāi Te Rangi, Ngāti Hauā) grew up in Tauranga Moana and is now based between Ruatōrea and Tauranga. After studying design and working at Mt Maunganui and Wellington, he lived the next 25 years in Te Tairāwhiti. 

Manu spent his first 17 years in Tairāwhiti working in community development including the establishment of a school for teenage parents and their children, a Puna Reo led by his wife Natasha Koia, and supporting a range of youth and neighbourhood projects. In 2015 Manu had a change of direction. The family moved to Makarika, just south of Ruatōrea where they built a house next to Natasha’s marae on a 130 hectare land block. 

Together with Panapa Ehau and others, Manu established Hikurangi Enterprises Ltd (HEL), a charitable company based in the Waiapu Valley with a focus on establishing sustainable industry and job creation. Much of the HEL story is captured in a Master thesis by Jack Barrett (https://tinyurl.com/jacksthesis). 

One of the ventures started by HEL is Hikurangi Bioactives Limited Partnership (HBLP), now owned by Enquire Limited, an investment vehicle established by Manu and an old school friend from Tauranga. HBLP partnered with Honey Lab / TRG Natural Pharmaceuticals to develop products for treating eczema and acne using Kānuka oil as the active ingredient. One of these products has been proven to treat eczema as effectively as steroid creams and is now in market with a global licence to a US pharmaceutical company. 

The other major investment by HBLP was establishing Rua Bioscience (originally Hikurangi Cannabis Company). Manu was a co-founder and the first CEO, helping the company receive the first medicinal cannabis licence in New Zealand. RUA became the first company founded by a Māori community to list on the NZX after raising $46m pre-IPO with the first $2m invested by locals via crowdfunding on the East Coast. The company now has a cannabis breeding facility at Ruatōrea and is selling cannabis in Europe, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia. 

Manu is currently involved in a range of horticultural and biotech projects with whenua Māori partners across Aotearoa including a research programme with three iwi entities developing pharmaceuticals from wairuakohu, a marae-based clinical studies programme called Tū Wairua using native psychedelic mushrooms, research on native berries with a large land trust and a biodiscovery project with his own iwi. He recently chaired a science review panel for Plant & Food Research looking at progress on a ten year $50m project building capability around Controlled Environment Agriculture and vertical farming. 

Manu regularly participates in United Nations meetings at the World Intellectual Property Organisation in Geneva, the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation, the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, the Steering Committee of the multilateral mechanism on Digital Sequence Information and the Cali Fund – all focused on the rights of Indigenous Peoples to utilise and protect indigenous organisms and ecosystems.

Manu is passionate about the potential for taonga species and ecosystems to be restored on the whenua and sustain whānau and hapū into the future. He enjoys working with Māori landowners and developing opportunities for Māori to move up the value chain from commodity producers and price-takers to IP owners and truly sustainable kaitiaki of taonga that whānau, hapū and iwi have rights and responsibilities to protect and utilise. To this end he has been supporting the development of Te Pūnaha Taonga a platform for kaitiaki deliberation and decision-making about the utilisation of specific taonga.