Sainsbury’s £180,000 taste for sea salt…
‘LIVING on a small island there’s not many job opportunities, you’ve got to create your own,’ says the founder of Hebridean Sea Salt.
Natalie Crayton, 34, set up the firm on the Isle of Lewis in 2011. Now Crayton, who has four employees, has won a £180,000 deal with Sainsbury’s that will see it launch into 360 stores. It is the firm’s first UK-wide deal.
The island in the Outer Hebrides has a population of about 18,500. Crayton said: ‘I was a stay-at-home mum. I wanted to work for myself for the flexibility with the children. I had the idea after trying to buy Scottish sea salt but there wasn’t any available. I decided to do it myself. It took six months of research. Our first customers were delicatessens.’
Crayton said she got the deal with Sainsbury’s through ‘perseverance, little by little’.
She added: ‘The plan is to get into more supermarkets and launch new products. We have a range of smoked salmon that uses our salt in the cure, and that’s available in Whole Foods.’
Hebridean Sea Salt is also stocked in Waitrose and Co-op stores in Scotland.
The expansion has been possible after a £250,000 investment in new equipment last year, which took production from 50kg to 300kg per day.
The business evaporates water sourced locally from Loch Erisort and then harvests the salt by hand before it is handpacked on site. It has had support from chefs including two Michelin-starred Andrew Fairlie at the Gleneagles Hotel and Edinburgh’s celebrated Mark Greenaway.