David Burguiere has kept bees since 1987. In 2010 he started boiling his own honey into hard candy, in a workshop beside the hives at Mont Mou, in Païta. That order is the whole point. Most confectioners buy their honey in. His comes off his own frames a few metres from the pan

The niaouli

Along the west coast of New Caledonia's main island there is a landscape known as the niaouli savannah, named after the paperbark tree that covers it. Melaleuca quinquenervia is native to the territory, and the word comes from yauli, in the language of the Belep islands to the north. Caledonians treat it as something close to a national tree.

Its leaves were distilled into an essential oil that appeared at the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1889 as Gomen-Oil, was registered as Goménol in 1893 and went on to sell in European pharmacies. The honey is a different product of the same tree, gathered by the bees from its flowers, and it has a following of its own in New Caledonia. It seldom turns up on European shelves.

Burguiere's hives sit in that country. The niaouli sweets are made with the honey his bees bring back from it.

What is in the sweet

Sugar, water, honey. That is the declared composition, for the plain honey version and the niaouli one alike.

The syrup is cooked to around 145 degrees, poured, cooled, cut and left to dry before each sweet is wrapped individually on a flowpack line. Batches are traced by lot. Packs carry the ingredients, the weight and a barcode. The workshop runs under hygiene registration AD 15-525.

The sweets keep for more than two years at ambient temperature, which is unusual enough to change the shipping conversation for a product coming from the Pacific.

The range

Honey candies and niaouli candies, in 50 g and 100 g packs. Lollipops in packs of five, in both flavours. Bulk cartons for repacking. Burguiere is working on extending the flavours to mint, lemon, orange, grapefruit, eucalyptus and ginger.

Where it sits

An individually wrapped sweet with a two-year life and a real origin story travels a long way down a shelf plan. It works in gourmet grocery, in souvenir and airport retail, on a hotel reception counter, inside a gift box, and loose at a till point.

The origin story is also short enough to fit on a shelf card, which tends to decide whether a specialty line moves.

The size of the workshop

The workshop is small and everything is made in batches, so output grows slowly. It is worth putting quantities on the table early in the conversation. For a specialty range, a boutique network or a hotel group, the scale works well.

The full range is live on the Business France Marketplace.