Our mission and passion are to produce a range of high-quality, natural herbal products.
We aim to bring the health and healing from our family farm on Banks Peninsula to your home.
We also provide excellent education to help you on your journey towards health and well-being.
Our health is closely tied to the health of the soil. Chemical-free, seasonal, local, and nutrient-dense food helps make and keep us healthy, strengthening our immune system. Through our workshops, we share our knowledge of organic horticulture, herbalism, wild medicinal plants, fermentation, cheese making and sourdough bread baking.
Our Mission
KoruKai Herb Farm was founded in 2014 in response to a mother's desire to provide her children with herbal support from the garden. We have grown from a stall at local farmers’ markets to a national brand, sending out over a hundred parcels per week to Kiwis across Aotearoa. We have stayed true to our mission of bringing top-quality herbal products and exceptional education to people at an affordable price.
Founder
Cornelia Holten is the founder and manager at KoruKai Herb Farm. She grew up on her family farm stretching back 20 generations in Bavaria, Germany. She has found her calling in Aotearoa by growing nutritious food for her family and medicinal herbs for her customers and feels fortunate to live in such a beautiful country surrounded by amazing people. She is a scientist at heart and wants to know the whys and hows of farming, soil, plants and how everything interacts.
She develops and manufactures most of the products in the KoruKai range and has a team of passionate and grounded women (and her husband Kai, of course) behind her, who support and encourage her along the way.
She also holds a Master’s degree in Education and is dedicated to sharing her passion and knowledge of fermentation, cheese and bread making, composting, soil health, self-sufficiency, foraging, and medicinal herbs through workshops, public talks, the KoruKai newsletter, and blog.
team
growing herbs
KoruKai Herb Farm is situated on the beautiful Banks Peninsula in New Zealand, where volcanic loess and clay soils provide the ideal foundation for growing exceptional herbs. We cultivate over 90 medicinal herbs and harvest and process 50 of them for use in our products. By growing the herbs on the farm, we gain independence from overseas markets, price fluctuations, and supply issues, as well as providing us with the peace of mind that comes from knowing we have produced herbs of outstanding quality, containing no synthetic fertilisers, herbicides, fungicides, or pesticides.
Regenerative
We are farming in a biological and regenerative way by actively building soil, testing for nutrient density of plants and sequestering carbon with the aid of the soil food web. Most of our inputs are produced right on the farm: compost, compost extract, vermicast, and fish hydrolysate. They inoculate our seeds, bringing vitality to the soil and introducing vital soil microorganisms that cycle nutrients for our plants.
Harvesting of herbs is done at the peak when they are full of volatile oils and potency to achieve the best possible results. The harvest begins in spring with leafy crops, such as plantain, and concludes in winter with medicinal roots like echinacea, elecampane, and valerian, yielding a total harvest of approximately one tonne of plant material per year. The plants are harvested by hand and dried on racks in a solar-ventilated drying shed. This method retains the colour, potency, and constituents of the herbs, allowing us to achieve outstanding quality.
The herbs are then used in our various product ranges – blended into herbal teas, extracted for the health remedies and incorporated into our skin care products.
self-sufficiency
KoruKai Herb Farm is based on self-sufficiency. We would not be where we are today without our passion for self-sufficiency and cooking from scratch. The base for everything that we do is growing our food and making our own cheese, bread, and lactic ferments. We grow all our own vegetables and meat, make all our own dairy products with fresh milk from our house cow and ferment, preserve and freeze for the off-seasons. Because of that we know which kitchen tools are essential to make our life easier. We share them here with our customers as well as essential cultures like probiotic milk and water kefir and sourdough starters.
30x 15g glass containers
This pack is for midwives supplying their clients with natural herbal remedies after giving birth. These are NOT sample sizes, but treatment sizes for sore breastfeeding nipples, haemorrhoids, bruises and swelling.
The balms and creams are packed with nature's goodness to provide relief and healing.
A powerful natural first aid duo featuring two herbal salves to support skin repair and injury recovery. Includes Skin Healing Salve for cuts, burns, eczema and irritated skin, and Injury Healing Salve for bruises, sprains, strains and muscle recovery.
Both are 25g in glass jars.
A complete natural skincare trio designed to deeply cleanse, clarify, and soothe problem-prone skin. This powerful pack combines a purifying facial steam, a detoxifying face bar, and a healing salve to help open pores, draw out impurities, and calm inflammation.
Suitable for teens and adults alike.
Includes: Herbal Facial Steam & Toner, Face Bar Detox, and Skin Healing Salve.
A deeply soothing and hydrating hand cream enriched with botanical extracts of kanuka, kawakawa, self-heal, and calendula. Designed to hydrate, soften, and restore rough, dry hands. Deeply hydrating and soothing, it helps soften dry hands while supporting skin repair and protection with a light, natural essential oil aroma.
Ideal after gardening, farming, climbing, and other activities. Recommended for all skin types, and especially beneficial for dry, rough, or overworked hands.
Available in a 40g glass jar.
A gentle, nourishing Baby Bottom Balm designed to soothe and protect delicate skin. Made with sunflower oil, beeswax, cocoa butter, and calming herbal extracts of calendula, chamomile, kanuka, and St John’s Wort, it helps keep skin soft, comforted, and cared for naturally.
50g glass container.
A gentle, deeply nourishing herbal massage oil that helps improve skin elasticity and support stretch mark prevention. It soothes dry, irritated skin and is ideal for both baby massage and maternal skin care.
50ml glass container with pump.
A versatile herbal skin salve formulated to soothe and support a wide range of skin concerns, including cuts, abrasions, weeping wounds, dry or flaky skin, eczema, rashes, acne, sunburn, and minor burns.
A natural first-aid essential for every home.
25g in a glass jar.
Please note: For oozy, wet eczema please see our Burn & Bite Cooling Gel.
For internal injuries, bruises, sprains, strains see our Injury Healing Salve.
A deeply restorative herbal salve with arnica and comfrey designed to support recovery from bruises, sprains, strains, and muscle fatigue. Traditionally used to ease soreness, support tissue repair, and comfort overworked or injured areas.
An essential addition to any natural first aid kit—especially after injury, surgery, or intense physical activity.
Available in a 25g glass jar.
For open wounds please see our Skin Healing Salve.