Christmas market at LIT
Students at Limerick Institute of Technology showed their entrepreneurial flair.
NewsIreland’s first gourmet sea salt to start production
Ireland’s first gourmet sea salt to start production
19.04.2010
A new West-Cork company is about to start production of the only Irish-made gourmet sea salt range and expects to employ six people by the end of this year.
Irish Atlantic Salt Ltd is based on the Beara Peninsula and was set up in January 2009 by Michael O’Neill, who has been involved in the shellfish industry for 20 years.
“From a catching perspective things got very tight and I found I was putting a lot more money in than I was taking back from it. Alternatives on the Beara Peninsula were few and far between – we only ever heard of the Celtic Tiger, which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing as we didn’t miss what we never had,” he says.
“I decided to go into shellfish farming and developed the largest standalone abalone unit in Europe. Part of the cleaning process in this very advanced unit creates a small amount of high quality sea salt and my father asked was there anything we could do with it.”
UK trip prompts further investigation
The idea stuck with O’Neill, and while he was on a trip to the UK a couple of years ago came across a factory built specifically for sea salt production, which prompted him to investigate it more thoroughly.
“I found there was a large market for gourmet sea salt products and that the UK had three relatively large producers and Ireland had none. I thought ‘if they can do it in the UK, we can do it here’.”
A qualified electronic engineer, O’Neill set about developing a system which approached sea salt production from a sustainability perspective. He then joined the Genesis Enterprise Programme (GEP) in Cork Institute of Technology, which he said helped with the “business element”.
At the recent GEP awards Irish Atlantic Salt won ‘Business Plan of the Year’.
“We have secured some finance from the bank and are working with the local Enterprise Board as well as Enterprise Ireland, but we mainly intend to grow ourselves. We’re talking to all the major distributors in the country and view this as a mainstream product that will fit into most supermarkets. There is already interest from the UK and a lot of interest within Ireland.”
Photo: Michael O'Neill, founder, Irish Atlantic Salt
Bookmark with: