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Wild Catch’s bêche-de-mer, aka sea cucumber, aka sea slug. (Photo: Supplied / Design: Tina Tiller)
Wild Catch’s bêche-de-mer, aka sea cucumber, aka sea slug. (Photo: Supplied / Design: Tina Tiller)

BusinessSeptember 6, 2022

‘They make you feel alive’: How China fell in love with NZ sea cucumbers

Wild Catch’s bêche-de-mer, aka sea cucumber, aka sea slug. (Photo: Supplied / Design: Tina Tiller)
Wild Catch’s bêche-de-mer, aka sea cucumber, aka sea slug. (Photo: Supplied / Design: Tina Tiller)

The founder of Wild Catch says his job is ‘the ultimate barbecue conversation starter’.

This is an excerpt from our new business newsletter StocktakeSubscribe here to read more.

James Parfitt has stories. There’s the one about the chilly bin full of sea cucumbers that he took to China in 2009, earning him some strange looks in airports. “I’ve got plenty [of yarns] about border agents,” says Parfitt, the founder and CEO of Wild Catch, a small South Island fisheries company exporting mainly to China. Ever since he started his company, those stories haven’t stopped. “Taking things up to trade fairs, that’s when things get a bit dicey,” he says, launching into a story that involves undercover travel. “I had to cross a few checkpoints quite covertly,” he admits.

Parfitt’s adventures with tubs of his bêche-de-mer – the official title of his New Zealand-grown sea cucumbers, also sometimes known by the less delicious-sounding name “sea slugs” – make Parfitt a popular person to chat to at gatherings. “It’s the ultimate barbecue conversation starter speaking to randoms,” he says. They ask him: what are sea cucumbers? And, how did he end up catching them in Aotearoa, drying them, sending them to China, and turning his operation into a profitable and award-winning business – a story he’s yet to discuss with a reporter before now? “It’s pretty weird,” Parfitt admits.

Sea cucumbers
A Wild Catch diver collects New Zealand sea cucumbers by hand. (Photo: Supplied)

They’re all questions I wanted to ask as well. So I gave him a call and asked him to explain everything. “I only have 10% battery,” Parfitt warned. Luckily, it was just enough time for him to tell me how, living in China in the late 2000s, he wanted to create a business that would connect him to his two favourite countries, China and Aotearoa. He befriended a sea cucumber expert who told him how popular the seafood delicacy is there. Parfitt remembered: “We have those in New Zealand. You see them out snorkelling. I used to see them around the Marlborough Sounds.”

So he came home, went diving and rounded some up. A sea cucumber is a little slug-like creature with soft spikes to help it stick to rocks around the South Island. “It’s in the same family as kina, sea urchins and starfish,” says Parfitt. “In New Zealand, they’re a golden colour, making them even more sought after.” After they’re harvested, by hand, Parfitt sends them to his Christchurch factory for drying and packaging. All of this takes time, which is why they’re so expensive. Right now, Wild Catch charges about $4.50 for each dried sea cucumber, while overseas variants can be as little as $1.

Sea cucumbers
Overseas sea cucumbers tend to be much darker – New Zealand ones are a golden colour, making them more desirable. (Photo: Supplied)

Price doesn’t seem to matter, because China is going wild for Wild Catch. After that first haul, Parfitt realised his sea cucumbers rated extremely well with customers. Overseas competitors farm sea cucumbers in less than ideal conditions, Parfitt says, using antibiotics, hormones and filthy water. Parfitt’s sea cucumbers are caught wild and, he says, sustainably. “We got some pretty good results and feedback and the texture was very similar to the really highly prized Japanese species – only ours were wild and a golden colour,” he says.

Once they make it to tables in China, sea cucumbers are eaten as a superfood. “Big chunks of populations will have one a day all through winter to ward off sickness and keep healthy,” says Parfitt. They can be cooked in many ways. “They carry the flavour of whatever they’re cooked in. At a banquet you might get served one on a plate by itself with minimal garnish or it might be in a big stirfry or a soup. It can be cooked in hundreds of different ways.” Some also consider it to be an aphrodisiac, but Parfitt says “that’s not something I can vouch for”.

What he can vouch for is how well Wild Catch is doing. Despite a small slump when Covid hit, he’s back to exporting nearly a million sea cucumbers a year. Parfitt’s hoping to grow that market and has big ambitions, aiming to make his sea cucumbers the biggest seafood exported out of New Zealand. He’s got a long way to go: the Ministry of Primary Industries estimates seafood exports topping $1.5 billion a year, including lobster, mussels, squid and salmon. He admits it’s a competitive industry, which is one of the reasons he’s been laying low, not wanting to draw attention to his “niche”.

sea cucumber
A sea cucumber in its natural habitat. Photo: Supplied

But awareness is growing. Parfitt has several awards to show for his business efforts, including an NZTE award for trade between New Zealand and China, and a recent nomination in the EY New Zealand entrepreneur of the year awards. He knows he can’t keep his business secret much longer, because the sea cucumber market is growing. He promises to send me a list of Auckland restaurants cooking with Wild Catch’s sea cucumbers, and I promise to try them. He remains a fan himself. “I love them,” he says. “They’re such a clean-tasting food. They’re not fishy at all … it’s a really healthy food that makes you feel alive.”


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Reserve Bank governor Adrian Orr and a resident of the Teton mountain range in Jackson Hole, Wyoming (Photos: Getty Images, supplied)
Reserve Bank governor Adrian Orr and a resident of the Teton mountain range in Jackson Hole, Wyoming (Photos: Getty Images, supplied)

BusinessSeptember 5, 2022

What Adrian Orr learned at Jackson Hole

Reserve Bank governor Adrian Orr and a resident of the Teton mountain range in Jackson Hole, Wyoming (Photos: Getty Images, supplied)
Reserve Bank governor Adrian Orr and a resident of the Teton mountain range in Jackson Hole, Wyoming (Photos: Getty Images, supplied)

Just back from the famed economic conference, the Reserve Bank governor tells Bernard Hickey what he learned from his international counterparts, and what it could mean for New Zealand.

Reserve Bank governor Adrian Orr is just back from Jackson Hole, the US Federal Reserve-hosted shindig for central bankers, finance ministers and economists held annually at a resort in Wyoming. There, he says, the talk was of the increasing signs that disruptions caused by the Covid recovery and the war in Ukraine are pumping inflation into the global economy in a more permanent way than previously expected. And it’s a problem that central bankers are serious about getting on top of.

Orr told me about his impressions from Jackson Hole in an interview for the latest episode of my podcast When The Facts Change, which you can listen to below. Here are the key takeaways from our 30 minute conversation.

  • Central banks are determined to establish their credibility as inflation fighters;
  • Growth rates have been hit hard and in a more permanent way than previous thought;
  • Most of Aotearoa-NZ’s inflation and interest rates are generated by global economic forces;
  • Covid may have changed labour supply and practices in permanent ways that could improve productivity; and,
  • Other central banks are interested in our Reserve Bank’s approach and its decisions to stop quantitative easing and start hiking interest rates earlier than others.

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‘Some of it’s longer-lasting and we’re serious about beating it back down’

The times they are a changin’ for everyone, and especially for central banks and the global economy. In 2020 and early 2021 they were seen as saviours of the global economy with their decisive interventions in the immediate wake of Covid, creating trillions of dollars to buy bonds and dramatically lower interest rates.

But as inflation surged towards double digit rates in much of the developed world this year, the view has shifted. Now central bankers are partly seen as the cause of inflation and their independence is being challenged because inflation rates are double and triple the targets they’re supposed to meet.

Nowhere was that more evident than at Jackson Hole, where hawkish talk about getting inflation under control rattled global financial markets and saw stock and bond prices fall 3-4%. This battle between central bankers and markets over the future of inflation has been focused on one place and one man for weeks. And it’s all because his view has changed so dramatically over the last year.

Near the end of August 2021, the world’s most important central banker, US Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, was at Jackson Hole to tell attendees that the US Federal Reserve saw early signs of rising inflation in the wake of Covid as “transitory” and likely to “wash out” over time. He used the word “transitory” four times in a 2,800 word speech, which had the effect of reassuring investors worried that inflation might rise to dangerous levels.

Fast-forward a year and, back at the conference, Powell was in a much tougher and more aggressive mood, spending just 1,300 words to say inflation was now his main focus and he wouldn’t hesitate to act to squash it.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell at a news conference on May 04, 2022 in Washington, DC. (Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Among the 120 or so other central bankers and macroeconomists there to hear the speech, Orr noticed the transformation.

“Without doubt, the tone changed considerably. Jerome Powell set two records in his speech the other day, he came in under eight minutes for a monetary policy speech. So that must be amongst the world’s shortest,” Orr said.

“And he took around 3% off global equity markets, so that must be around one of the world’s most expensive speeches. They say small things are generally more expensive, and he delivered,” he said.

“He is reminding people that, first and foremost, [the Federal Reserve’s] primary concern is maintaining low and stable inflation. And yes, people have underestimated the scale and persistence of the shocks that the globe is going through at the moment… Once the economy shrinks, and its capacity to produce, once labor is scarce, capital is scarce, energy is more expensive, [then] the inflationary pressures are much higher and more persistent.”

‘He mea tautoko nā ngā mema atawhai. Supported by our generous members.’
Liam Rātana
— Ātea editor

Why we should care about the Jackson Hole talk

Orr made a point of explaining why the conference matters and how interconnected our economy, our financial markets and financial conditions are to the rest of the world.

“We are a very small economy bobbing around on a global financial ocean. And you know, the big swells and waves that come in that financial ocean are driven by the larger countries in the world,” he said.

“The US dollar is still the common denominator, largely in currencies around the world. So what is happening to US monetary policy, European monetary policy is still absolutely critical to what is happening to the New Zealand economy, and particularly around interest rates, exchange rates, and all things financial.

“The base level of interest rates are set internationally, not here. I would say the vast bulk, on average through time, for interest rates are determined overseas.”

‘A support group for central bankers’

Orr also reported back that central banks felt under enormous pressures.

“A little bit of that Jackson Hole gig was a victim support group for central bankers,” he said jokingly. “They are under immense pressure. Globally, it’s no different. And in each country, everyone’s got higher than targeted inflation. And everyone is wearing the blame for that, because our task is to keep low and stable inflation,” he said.

Orr said Covid and the war in Ukraine had effectively made the world poorer, which was putting pressure on central banks to demonstrate their value, and the importance of their independence.

“I think it’s important that central bankers always remain paranoid about losing their independence,” he said, pointing to the need for central banks to be transparent and explain what they can and can’t do.

“The perspective that I think people are missing is we have had a wealth shock. We are poorer as citizens of planet Earth, because of Covid, because of the climate change implications, because we keep going back to war,” he said.

“Monetary policy can smooth the pain through time, or shift it between sectors, but it can’t avoid pain.”

Climate change and a poorer Earth

Orr pointed out how climate change was also a factor slowing growth and introducing inflation, along with war.

“Earth is now poorer. We’ve got a sudden realisation around climate change, and so we’re seeing for any one investment, the returns are different or less. We’ve got much higher input costs, energy’s much higher, consumption costs and food. Whilst employment levels have remained where they are, hours of work are declining so we’ve got less supply capacity,” he said.

Orr said it was too early to tell how permanent lower growth would be.

“But without doubt, the signals are that long run growth is going to be on a lower trajectory, than say in the beginning of this century. So the lower trajectory is a partly around demographics, it’s partly around the shocks, the climate change shocks, and partly around the pandemic supply chains,” he said.

“Now, rather than ‘just in time’ stocking, it’s ‘just in case’ stocking. You are seeing quite a lot of general change in economic behavior that is not conducive to innovation or increasing higher growth. It’s constraining it at the moment.”

Good productivity news

Orr said there were some encouraging signs for inflation from worker productivity, and in particular working from home, which meant fewer hours to produce the same output.

“We’re doing that because we’re probably more productive. We’re probably now got more capital, our bedroom is now an office. It’s almost like a capital injection. And so that has heightened productivity, but it varies significantly across sectors,” he said.

“I would say you are in a new equilibrium where managers are going to have to be far more focused on managing outcomes, not inputs, having trust and confidence that you know that the people are there. And people are going to be far more flexible and demanding that flexibility in how they work.

“In the long run, over the next five to 10 years, I would say productivity and per capita growth will be back to a steady state level [to] what we saw pre-Covid. But we have to remember that level was a low-growth level, it was not a boom period.”


Follow Bernard Hickey’s When the Facts Change on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favourite podcast provider.

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