Deer milk market entry plan and customer insights

Organisation: Landcorp Farming Limited
Grant Number: M17002 & M18004
Grant Amount: $158,248 & 54,000
Grant Type: Market Insight Grants

Pāmu (brand name for Landcorp) is at the forefront of transforming New Zealand farming, it leads innovation in farming to help counter the fluctuations of large volume, traditional commodity-producing agriculture.  Pāmu’s size and scale mean they can try things that other farmers cannot and forge a way for new industries.

Deer milk’s rich nutritional profile lends itself to foodservice, but components important for skincare, like proactive and beneficial properties, have been identified.  There are various vitamins which suggests deer milk could be used for personal care and nutraceutical applications.

Pāmu Deer Milk is a world first ingredient, showcasing ground breaking innovation in the New Zealand food industry.  Chefs across New Zealand are excited to work with a brand new ingredient, one which brings something truly innovative and unique to their menus.  Pamu Deer Milk is currently selling to a number of leading Auckland and Wellington restaurants and will launch in Australia in September.

During the first stage this meant proving that deer milk could be processed and verifying its gross composition.  Deer milk was shown to be a nutrient dense milk and market insights validated the potential for deer in food service, skin care, and nutraceutical applications.”

The second phase funding from AGMARDT allowed Pamu to test their food service proposition with New Zealand’s best chefs and led to Pāmu commercialising the product in June 2018 and winning the Fieldays Grassroots Innovation award.

“AGMARDT has provided invaluable support through two stages of the deer milk project.  As an industry, agriculture needs to be changing and evolving what we produce in response to consumer demand. Pāmu Deer Milk is one of the ways that Pāmu is investing in innovation, with like-minded partners like AGMARDT, to take the milk industry forward.” Steve Carden, CEO, Pāmu

We are grateful for the assistance the AGMARDT Grant provided. It has allowed Freshco to direct sales and manage our own destinies in each market enabling us to extract more value from the supply chain to the consumer.

John Mangan / Director, Freshco

AGMARDT supports and enables. Projects and people benefit from funding; New Zealand benefits from development of ideas, technologies, approaches and leadership. In particular, the trust facilitates information dissemination: AGMARDT is the catalyst for ripples that spread through the primary sector.

Dr Jacqueline Rowarth /

AGMARDT's support of Texus in the above process tangibly accelerated the development of the above essential activities and testing of market entry strategy, while also exposing Texus management to cutting-edge thought leadership around market shaping and the levers that can be applied to scope and facilitate such shaping.

Nick Davenport / CEO, Texus Fibre Industry Leader Scholarship Winner

The support from AGMARDT has enabled us to gain greater insights into farmer behaviour across all sectors and which will assist accelerated uptake of the livestock exchange and enhance market opportunities for all farmers.

Jason Roebuck / Managing Director, Stock-X Limited