From the Founder

The founder was Andrew. I'm Nikki — the one carrying it forward.

This brand was started by a man named Andrew. He was a good friend of mine — a New Zealander who grew up where Mānuka grows, who understood what the East Cape held long before the global wellness industry caught up. He founded NZ Country Mānuka in California in 2014 with a single mission: to bring nature's best-kept secrets to the world. He was deliberate about every part of it — the East Cape sourcing, the lab work, the small-batch approach, the refusal to compromise on what went into the bottle.

Andrew passed away in 2021. The company nearly went with him.

I took it on in 2022. I revived it because the alternative was watching his mission disappear — and the alternative was watching more people die early from the same lies he was trying to push back against. Ultra-processed food. Lifelong medication. A system engineered to keep them sick.

Nikki Jai · Owner & Operator

Why I picked it up.

I'm Australian. I'm honest about that. I have a built-in bias toward Australian-made products — most of the time I'll back our own if I can. But there's one product I refuse to play favourites with: real, pure Mānuka oil only comes from New Zealand. The East Cape chemotype is the only one on Earth that produces β-triketones at therapeutic concentration. Patriotism doesn't override chemistry. Andrew knew that. He built the brand around it.

I have buried friends. I am sober today because I made it out. Most don't. The ones who do almost never get there through the system that's meant to help them. They get there by finding something real — a tradition that pre-dates the marketing, a plant or a practice or a teacher that quietly worked while the noise carried on.

Mānuka is one of those things. The Māori knew it for centuries before any pharmaceutical company existed. The science came later and confirmed what tradition had already shown. Both matter. Neither needs to be loud about it.

Andrew built this because he knew that. I picked it up because someone had to.

What we make, and what we don't.

We make four products: pure East Cape Mānuka Oil in 10ml and 30ml, Mānuka Honey at UMF 15+, and a Mānuka Honey Tallow Balm built on five ingredients you can pronounce.

We do not make claims that the FDA has not authorised. We do not chase trends. We do not sell hope in a bottle. What we sell is unprocessed. Tested. Certified. And used daily by people who have tried the alternative and come back.

"Better than anything my dermatologist ever gave me." — verified customer, 5★

The receipts.

• #1 best seller in Mānuka Oil on Amazon US
• 4× the monthly sales of the next-largest competitor
• Over 100,000 happy customers and growing
• UMF 15+ certified, MGO 514+, GC-MS lab tested every batch
• Buy with Prime active, free standard shipping in US and UK

These numbers aren't a flex. They're the receipt. They mean people tried the product, came back, told their friends, and rated it honestly. That's the only metric that matters at the end of the day.

The mission this funds.

NZ Country Mānuka is the vehicle, not the destination. A percentage of every sale supports humanitarian work focused on people the food and pharma systems have failed — those in recovery, those rebuilding, those who never got the start the rest of us did.

This is not a marketing line. It's the reason Andrew built the brand. It's the reason I carried it forward. The mission was always bigger than the bottle.

Updates on humanitarian deployment will be published on this page as they happen, with full transparency.

Where this is going.

The next decade will sort the brands that meant it from the brands that didn't. We intend to be in the first group. Honest products, honest stories, honest profits, recycled into the kind of work that doesn't get done by the people currently in charge of doing it.

If you have read this far, you probably already know whether this brand is for you. If it is, welcome. If it isn't, no harm done.

Either way, take care of yourself. Take care of the people in front of you. Question what you've been told. The world needs you sharp.

— Nikki Jai
Owner & Operator, NZ Country Mānuka
Carrying forward Andrew's mission since 2022 · Tampa Bay, Florida

Read more

• About NZ Country — the brand history
• Science & Efficacy — the research record
• Sustainability & Ethics — how the products are made
• Customer Testimonials — in their words
• The Honest Brand Comparison — how we stack up against every other Mānuka oil brand