Melora

Melora is a New Zealand natural-health and personal-care brand built around Mānuka honey and Mānuka essential oil, both drawn from the indigenous Mānuka plant (Leptospermum scoparium). The company is based in Awakeri, in the Bay of Plenty region on New Zealand's North Island, and its honey and oil are gathered along the country's remote East Coast. It is owned by the New Zealand Mānuka Group, which markets Melora internationally as one of its two consumer brands [6].

Melora remains an active business. Its website operates commercially with a 2026 copyright and current quality certifications, though its on-site blog has not been updated since 2020. Alongside food-grade honey and lozenges, the brand's cosmetic range covers topical skincare and body-care products that pair Mānuka honey with Mānuka oil.

The business traces to the mid-1990s and the work of Phil and Sharan Caskey, a couple who set out to turn traditional Māori knowledge of the Mānuka plant into a global health resource. Phil Caskey, described in regional press as a former sheep, cattle and deer farmer from Taranaki, sold his deer interests in 1995. The following year, according to the New Zealand Herald, he and Sharan set up a venture called Bee and Herbal to market Mānuka honey products [7]. Melora's own pages place the founding more loosely in the "mid-1990s" [5]; the Herald's 1996 date refers specifically to that first honey business, from which the present group descends. The Melora consumer brand itself emerged later within the wider company.

An early turning point came in 2000, when Phil Caskey worked with the University of Waikato and a British medical-device company to create and register what the brand describes as the world's first Mānuka honey wound-care dressing [5]. That collaboration helped bring the honey's antibacterial properties to wider medical and consumer attention. In 2002, a related venture called Api-Med Medical Honey was formed as a joint venture with WaikatoLink, the university's commercial arm [7]. The company that markets Melora today took its current shape as New Zealand Manuka in 2011 [7].

Melora is owned by the New Zealand Mānuka Group, a New Zealand company that describes itself as using its Mānuka honey to build brands it markets worldwide. The group holds two primary consumer brands, Melora and Mānuka Lab, and reports that both have sold well in the United States and the United Kingdom [6]. A separate website operates under the Melora name in the United Kingdom in addition to the New Zealand site.

Melora's stated mission is "to tell the world about the health benefits of New Zealand's indigenous super plant, Mānuka" [5]. The company frames its identity around ethical sourcing and community, summed up in the line "caring for nature is at the heart of everything we do." Central to this is what it calls the Fair Share Programme, which it describes as an open, transparent scheme that returns a percentage of honey and oil income to the landowners who host Mānuka on remote coastal land. According to the company, the arrangement splits proceeds equally between resource owners, beekeepers and the processing company — a model it presents as an industry first.

Melora's core products are UMF-graded Mānuka honey, sold for both dietary and topical use, and MβTK-graded Mānuka essential oil, distilled from the plant's leaves. From these it builds a personal-care line, including a Double-Action range that combines Mānuka honey and Mānuka oil in products such as a body lotion, face cream, balm and wash. The brand also runs a traceability scheme, Mānuka Originz, which it says lets customers trace where their honey was gathered.

Quality grading is a recurring theme. The company holds licensee status with the UMF (Unique Mānuka Factor) Honey Association, under licence number 2015 — a mark that certifies the purity and potency of Mānuka honey [2]. Its essential oils carry the MβTK (Mānuka β-triketones) grade, which the company says reflects the level of naturally occurring compounds shown in research to have strong antibacterial activity. Melora states that its honey also bears the OU Kosher mark, and that it does not test its essential oils on animals.

Environmental stewardship features prominently in how Melora presents itself. The company says that since 2016 it has planted nearly nine million trees around the East Cape of New Zealand, and it links its Fair Share Programme to the protection of Mānuka habitat in remote coastal communities. Honey and oil are gathered under what the brand calls an Ethical Honey Harvesting programme, which it says sets quality and welfare standards for operators, with an emphasis on bee protection and worker safety.

Melora is an operating brand. Its online store carries a 2026 copyright and current UMF licensee status, indicating ongoing trade, while the last dated content on its blog is from 2020. Manufacturing takes place at the group's facilities in Opotiki and Whakatane, in the Bay of Plenty, and the raw honey and oil are sourced from New Zealand's East Coast.