A taste of success for achill sea salt
BY Christmas an Achill family will have moved from their home into a factory setting producing multi-award winning sea salt.
And it all happened by chance.
The inspiration to harvest sea salt came coincidentally from Marjorie O’Malley watching a documentary on sea salt and from her husband, Kieran, reading a book on local history, which made reference to the remains of a salt factory in Polranny in 1831.
Marjorie explained: “We were watching a documentary on TV on sea salt in the UK and Kieran was reading a book on the history of Achill. I said could they make salt from the Irish Sea and he said that they were making salt here on Achill.
“We also discovered that the 1817 maritime map of Mayo by William Bald shows salt pans in Polranny.
“That was the inspiration for Achill Island Sea Salt. We started Googling it and got in touch with a few other salt set-up companies.
“So with Kieran and our son Sean, we started here in Keel in the kitchen on the hob. We collected the water from the shore. It is a very slow and time-consuming process. Quality is important. If you get the wrong crystals you have to recrystalise. The process takes about a day-and-a-half.
“Now we have a bowser rather than going to the shore with buckets. The bowser takes about 1,000 litres and out of that you get 30 kilograms of sea salt.
“It is a very slow process. You have to evaporate the water, boil it, and get the temperature right to form the crystals. The drying is the hardest. We invested in ovens, which did not work, and now we are using dehydrators. They work but they are slow.”
The initial sea salt was sold at Keel country market and Kieran took it to Kelly’s Kitchen in Newport and then to Cafe Rua, who took it to a chefs’ event in Galway.
They all liked it. They started tweeting about it and then it took off.
Numerous awards have followed, the latest being a silver award at the Blás na hÉireann awards in Kerry last weekend.
Marjorie added: “We started making the salt at the end of June of last year. After we featured on Ear To The Ground we knew we had to move out of the kitchen and we went to the enterprise board and they helped us with our pilot plan, got us the money, and we moved into a small unit beside our house in March.
“Enterprise Ireland have now invested in us, which brings us to another stage. Hopefully before Christmas we will have moved into a larger unit.
“There are a few places we are looking at with Udaras Na Gaeltachta and keeping it on the island. We have a Jobbridge starting with us as well.”
Explained Marjorie: “There is an emergence of local salts worldwide. Every one is different. Ours apparently has a uniqueness maybe because of the seabed, the churning of the winter water, the north Atlantic Drift, and obviously how clean the water is. Some salts are grey and they have to be washed while ours is snow white.”
The sea salt is available at Ireland West Airport Knock, Horkan’s Garden Centre, Turlough, Cafe Rua, Castlebar, Market 57, Westport, The Food Store, Claremorris, Walsh’s, Westport, Clarke’s, Ballina, and several outlets in Galway plus a lot of the high end shops in Dublin.
Marjorie can be contacted on (087) 7590499 or salannmaraacla@gmail.com, or visit achillislandseasalt.ie.