RESOURCES

The New Zealand hop industry is in the enviable position of having a low pest and disease environment.

Its isolated geographic location combined with strict border controls and a hop plant breeding programme targeting pest and disease resistant varieties has proven to be a real winner.

The result is that New Zealand uses far less chemical spray than many other hop producing countries. This is a major and often overlooked advantage of using New Zealand hop varieties. As consumers become ever more curious, sophisticated and demanding of transparency, this aspect of beer production is likely to become very important.

Our farms never use fungicides, as we do not have the likes of Downy mildew nor Powdery mildew present in our hop gardens.

We endeavour to control the one hop plant pest we do have - a mite that can reduce hop yields - through biological means, in order to keep the use of pesticides to an absolute minimum.

We use sheep to control weeds in our hop gardens, which reduces the need to spray for weeds.

Our hop products comply with stringent Maximum Residue Limits (MRLs) around the world, but for us this is just the beginning as we look to go above and beyond what is achievable elsewhere.