ESTABLISHED in 2011, the Isle of Skye Sea Salt Company is the first commercial sea salt producer on the island in 300 years. The business was set up by Nanette Muir and Chris Watt who don’t have backgrounds in the food and drink industry but their unique, environmentally-friendly way of making salt singles them out in the UK market.
Name: Nanette Muir
Age: 62
Position: Director
WHAT’S YOUR BUSINESS CALLED?
Isle of Skye Sea Salt Company.
WHERE IS IT BASED?
Skye.
WHY DID YOU SET UP THE BUSINESS?
ABOUT five years ago my colleague Chris Watt came up with the idea of starting a business. It seemed like a really nice idea, particularly because we would be using the Skye name on our product. There’s a company on the east side of Maine in the US using polytunnels to produce salt and we thought it sounded straightforward. Of course, we have now realised it is not as easy as it looks. We trialled it in a small polytunnel but could only do from April to September. We sold everything from our first harvest which encouraged us to scale up the business. We have three large polytunnels now. I used to work in the museum sector and Chris was in the sustainable housing industry so that’s where the environmental side comes in.
HOW IS IT DIFFERENT FROM COMPETING BUSINESSES?
SKYE has high quality water locally and that is part of our USP. There is no-one else making salt this way in the UK so we have had to innovate a lot. We make a lovely product and have a good origin story but we are restricted to tide times, wind and we need to keep insects out of the tunnel. We have been talking to people locally who have polytunnels for advice.
Neither of us were involved in the food industry before this so it has taken us a while to learn how to make salt. The process makes us unique but also limits us due to conditions like weather. If we have a really hot summer we make more salt.
It is nice to talk to people who buy our salt – we can tell them where it comes from and people are interested in the process of how we make it and how it is different to other salts. We were on James Martin’s Home Comforts cookery programme in January 2016. He was interested in our salt-making process which generated interest from other companies who asked us about the sustainable aspect of the product.
WHAT IS YOUR TARGET MARKET?
WE sell to catering companies, retail and a small number of chefs on the island. The chefs make high quality food so that works for us. We can’t provide huge amounts of salt to the restaurant industry so I’m tentative of taking on new clients. We also sell online and have a lot of repeat custom that way, especially after the James Martin programme. People are becoming more interested in the origin of food and want high quality products and we primarily appeal to that market. Salted caramel is a popular flavour at the moment so we sell salt to small food companies for that. Fortunately salt is a small element of the ingredient list in salted caramel chocolate, fudge or ice cream which works for us because of our limited quantities.
WHAT DO YOU ENJOY MOST ABOUT RUNNING THE BUSINESS?
I FOUND trade shows hard at first but I enjoy them more now because it is nice to get good feedback. We put samples of salt on a tomato and it is good to see people’s reaction when they taste it because our salt has a sweet flavour and doesn’t have a bitter aftertaste like most salts. Talking to customers is very rewarding. We have also won a number of awards like a Delicious Magazine Produce Award and it is very nice to get that recognition.
WHERE DO YOU HOPE THE BUSINESS WILL BE IN 10 YEARS TIME?
IT is a very sustainable company. For a small population like Skye the business could be here indefinitely. We have looked at expanding into crofts which would expand production without investing in more polytunnels.
In terms of staff it is currently just myself and Chris and we employ other workers as and when we need to. It would be good to get more employees further down the line.
I’m very proud of what we’ve achieved so far considering we don’t have a background in this. We struggle to find time to add more flavours but I’m happy with our pure Scottish sea salt.
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