Haigan Murray 
Haigan co-founded the Coconut Knowledge Center (CKC) in 2014, addressing the predicted decline in plantation-level productivity and its long-term consequences on smallholder livelihoods and supply chains. By 2025, the ramifications of these upstream productivity challenges have manifested in the form of processing factory closures, job losses, and widespread volatility across the supply chain, sparking urgent national debates about a looming coconut crisis.
To secure the future of the coconut industry, large-scale replanting is critical, yet despite decades of discussions, little progress has been made to meet this essential need. CKC is dedicated to transforming coconut plantation economics through innovative business models. The organization seeks to learn from successful tropical agribusinesses and incentivize smallholder farmers—who manage 98% of the world’s coconut palm area—to collaborate with new investments in the sector, supported by active policy engagement from national governments.
In addition to his work with CKC, Haigan is a Director of several agriculture-focused businesses across New Zealand, Australia, and India. He is also actively investing in the Indonesian coffee sector and involved in developing projects that convert waste agricultural and forestry biomass into renewable energy.
Haigan Murray
Chairman Coconut Knowledge Center, CEO RCA Carbon Indonesia, Chairman, Oils and Powders New Zealand Limited.
Haigan conceived and founded the Coconut Knowledge Center in 2014, as an inter-disciplinary connector and advocate, in response to the systemic decline in coconut productivity, and the potential impact on coconut grower livelihoods. Haigan is a New Zealand citizen, with international development experience, predominantly within Africa and South East Asia.
Haigan believes it essential to re-draw the tropical agroforestry (food forest) economic model, and to incentivise and engage the small-scale farmers who own 98% of global coconut palm lands, most of whom are very poor, despite the growth and popularity of coconut consumer products.
Haigan’s executive governance curates the CKC Code of Conduct and Mission Statement, fostering and expanding CKC’s global networks and relationships with people from diverse backgrounds, and in an environment of equality, particularly within social impact, coconut innovation, germplasm conservation, planting material capacity development and the creation of a new investment climate for coconut agri-business and tropical agroforestry.
A polymath generalist with wide international experience within a range of sectors; foreign trade supervision services, inspection and testing services, plant based ingredient development, financial services, wildlife conservation and environmental protection. In 2021 Haigan conceived and founded RCA Carbon Indonesia as a response to the potential and powerful role of tropical agroforestry systems in climate change mitigation and adaptation. Haigan advocates that smallholders, traditional and indigenous communities must be recognised and incentivised for their critical roles in balancing food security and climate change.
Haigan believes that measurable social impact should be the embedded or default setting for global business. Both CKC and RCA are all about achieving fair change upstream in tropical countries, for the benefit of all global stakeholders, and to encourage financial innovation and a genuine willingness from lenders to simplify.