Kakadu Plums are growing in popularity around the world, leading to the development of more plantations across the country.
The small, green fruit is native to the subtropical woodlands of northern Australia, where it mostly grows wild.
For thousands of years, the Kakadu Plum – also known as Gubinge, Billygoat Plum or Murunga – has been a form of bushtucker for Indigenous Australians.
It’s traditionally been valued as a natural remedy for many different ailments, including bacterial and viral infections, arthritis and skin conditions. Now, the whole world is becoming aware of the nutritional power of the fruit.
Wild Harvest NT, a company that specialises in wholesale supply and processing of the Kakadu Plum, has seen a huge growth in interest and demand for the plum over the past few years due to all the associated health benefits.
“The amount of research we’ve had done shows that, as a health benefit food, there’s not much you can compare to it,” Wild Harvest founder David Boehme says.
“It’s awesome, it knocks out just about anything you can think of; colds, flus, arthritis, inflammation…My parents are in their 80s and they use it for joint pain, and they really notice the difference.”
He says many people lock onto the fact that it has high vitamin C (over 50 times the concentration found in oranges), without realising its many other health benefits.
“Sadly there’s not many trials, it’s in vitro and anecdotal evidence, but what we’re hearing and seeing is incredible. There’s a lot of interest from the health industry, pharmaceutical companies and cosmetics,” he says.
“Eventually it will go into medicinal use. It’s now being looked at as part of treatments for MS, and also for dementia, which is really exciting.”
Some of Wild Harvest’s clients include a health spa in Germany, a hair product company in Canada and Australian skincare company Mukti. It’s also caught the interest of major global pharmaceutical companies and even soft drink giant Pepsi.
Mr Boehme says Kakadu Plums are now being used as a natural preservative in the seafood industry, and by a growing number of chefs – including the Northern Territory’s leading caterer, Karen Sheldon.
“She’s now using it as a preservative agent that’s going out in her pre-cooked meals to remote communities,” he says.
“She’s also making really interesting spritzers using Kakadu Plum and Dragonfruit…and she’s based in Parliament House in Darwin, so there’s a whole lot of people [in the Australian government] getting exposed to the taste and benefits of Kakadu Plums.”
Currently, the majority of Kakadu Plum trees are grown wild, which makes harvesting for companies like Wild Harvest both difficult and temperamental.
“It’s no walk in the park,” Mr Boehme says. “Trees are spread throughout the bush and you have to walk through high spear grass to get to them. So you might get half a kilo on one tree, then walk another 200m and get another kilo.”
He says it can be challenging to get people out to harvest as well, thanks to an abundance of native life, including green ants and snakes.
“To get high volume you have to be really focused,” he says, estimating Wild Harvest processes about 20 tonnes a year, and currently only collect the fruit after orders are placed.
The fruit itself also has a short shelf life and has to be stored at minus 20 Celsius. Mr Boehme says these factors make shipments of whole fruit unrealistic, so Wild Harvest processes the fruit as a powder before sending it to market.
“It’s such an expensive process that we prefer to value add as much as we can before going to marketplace. At the moment our main form is a dried powder, and we’re also developing a liquid extract.”
The increase in demand is also leading to other challenges.
“It’s a culturally significant aspect [for Indigenous Australians] to go and collect bush tucker. So we want to keep than in mind with how we do things,” he says.
“But we’re focusing more on developing cultivated areas to keep up with demand. The whole aim is that once we get orchards developed, communities will come on board because they can see the sense in orchards that they can walk to and harvest from.”
He says they currently have 40,000 trees over “a couple of hundred hectares” and plan to cultivate another 20,000 to keep up with demand.
