Investors in Jay Curtin’s Australian Honey Ventures may have lost all of the millions she raised from the public for her honey business.
Insolvency practitioners HLB Mann Judd Insolvency WA were officially appointed administrators to the company on the 1st of December 2025.
A visit to the company’s online store at www.realgoodhoney.com on December 5th also revealed it has stopped taking orders.
Indeed all the products at the online store are listed as sold out.
Ms Curtin attracted considerable publicity for her honey start-up, and for her multiple successful rounds of capital-raising via the crowd-funding business, Birchal.
But it seems she spent much of the millions raised on promotional videos, graphic design, marketing consultants, social media and other non-essential business activities.
And the business model itself kept on changing.
Initially Ms Curtin said the company intended to provide a better deal for WA beekeepers, giving them higher prices for their honey.
Then it was said that the company would prosper on the back of export deals to the middle east.
Neither of those models appeared to produce any profits however, despite Curtin’s claims of deals with major retailers including Coles and Woolies.
More recently, the company has switched to a focus on womens health issues, using local WA honey varieties.
Therapeutic Goods Administration approval for a range of honey based products for topical use was gained*, and the market appears to have responded positively to the new focus.
But with profits still elusive, and company funds dwindling, Ms Curtin appears to have had a serious falling out with some of her most important backers in the local bee-keeping industry.
Curtin took aim, in particular, at her chairman, Stephen Fewster.
She told the Australian Financial Review in December last year that he was “introverted” and didn’t understand her new business model.
“I copped so much shit,” she told the AFR. “It was a concept a lot of males struggled to grasp.”
Curtin also told the AFR the company was “on track for its first profitable year”.
It isn’t clear what, if anything happened during 2025 to prevent the company making a profit.
But her decision last year to become CEO of an online cake-ordering start-up, jointly with her teenage son, doubtless didn’t help.
That business – initially called Got Cakey and now known as Got Bakey, has also raised significant funding – more than a million dollars - from ‘mum and dad’ investors via Birchals.
For more information go to
www.realgoodhoney.com
See also:
· Note: TGA registrations for some of Australian Honey Ventures products were cancelled earlier this year (i.e. 2025) following non-payment of annual fees.
See https://www.tga.gov.au/resources/sponsor/australian-honey-ventures-pty-ltd