Salt, Spice and Synergy - Opito Bay Salt
Written by Carl Muir
There’s something life affirming in knowing exactly where our food comes from.
Salt, is a staple we use to season nearly every dish we eat. It contains many of life’s essential minerals like calcium and magnesium. Put simply - life wouldn’t be the same without salt!
So we were stoked when a new artisan producer of salt emerged on the Coromandel, forming a genuine connection from the sea to the salt we use in our cooking! Even better, this salt is made at one of our favourite local beaches, Opito Bay. There’s now a little taste of that paradise in each dish we eat! Beautiful!
Perry and Erin, founders of Opito Bay Salt, are another successful sea change story, having made the shift to the Coromandel from Auckland following a light bulb moment. On a cold winter’s night in Grey Lynn, Erin was enthusing over an artisan salt she had just bought. Perry, who’s father had been a chef, mused how little he’d thought about where salt comes from. Some brainstorming and a bottle of red wine or two, soon Erin and Perry were throwing in their corporate jobs and moving to the beach to make salt!
Perry had been coming to Opito Bay for 22 years, so it seemed the natural birth place for this new salty business. Two years and lots of hard work later, the Opito Bay Salt brand is well and truly established. There’s a flourishing online business with orders coming in hot all day, and their salt is now served in a growing list of restaurants and specialty food stores around New Zealand.
Everything has been done by hand by these two hard workers, including constructing their many greenhouses they use to evaporate salt water to crystallize the salt. Salt water is collected, in true Kiwi beach style, driving a red tractor down to the beach at Opito, then evaporated in trays in the greenhouses back at base. It can be a brutal place to get work done, - the optimum temperature in the greenhouse is around 60C!
Ultimately, this is a sustainable business and simple process that is easy on the planet, leaving salt in the trays, the fresh water condensating down the greenhouse walls, through the weed matting eventually ending up distilled back in the water table. Mother earth, we think, gives this operation the big tick.
A challenge for the duo has been keeping up, and so they have added more capacity in their greenhouses to keep up, also adding several ‘moon pools’ into the mix to keep production at a level that meets the growing demand.
As long as the sun is shining, these two will be making salt!
Erin says it has been a labour of love “Whenever you are doing something like this where you are working for yourself & you are working on an amazing product, it doesn’t feel like work.” Perry echoes this love of what they do “We love the Coromandel. Our brand Opito Bay Salt is testament and tribute to that. Opito captures the essence of what the Coromandel is about, the beautiful backdrop and its remoteness, and also the people, they are a social lot! Salt brings people together. We also try to source local ingredients from around the Coromandel to combine with our salt.”
Their smoked chilli and rosemary salt is their biggest seller - the smoked chilli comes from a producer in Whenuakite. Second favourite of their growing tribe is a Coromandel kelp sea salt, with the kelp collected and dried in Port Charles. New collabs come easily as Erin and Perry visit local markets to sell their handcrafted salts and they are very dedicated to opening up retail partnerships across NZ..
So what's it like starting and running a business with your other half?
“When you’re doing it with someone you love, there’s triple happiness. That was part of the motivation of going into our own business, to share something like this” says Perry.
Erin says, “Initially we did not delineate roles, we thought we’d do everything together, but it has ended up as we’ve got insanely busy, that we’ve organically fell into a groove of who does what and working in tandem. I’ve ended up gravitating towards finance, looking after our wholesale/retail customers and packing orders and doing whatever it takes to keep the business side of things rolling, such as making sure supplies of everything we need a rolling in.”
Perry gravitates towards keeping sales, marketing and production., The business is tracking towards topping a tonne of salt this year. “Much of the work in the greenhouse needs to be done first or last thing. Its hitting 53C in the greenhouses now in the middle of the day, and that’s pretty unbearable.”
When the sun isn’t shining in winter, there is still work to be done, spreading the good word about Opito Bay Salt through PR, and searching for new stockists. This year some of that hard work paid off with the NZ Herald’s Viva mag listing Optio Bay Salt Co in the top ten Christmas gift list!
It’s not all work work work though, there’s a healthy balance of Erin and Perry’s outdoorsy passions to be fulfilled, like boating and kontiki fishing off the beach. There’s the odd glass of wine savoured at base too, and as we catch up with Erin and Perry, the bottle is popped on a glass of Mercury Bay Estate Sauvignon Blanc on their Opito Bay deck. We get in to the important job of tasting the Opito Bay salt range.
Perry explains that Opito Bay Salt Co’s sea salt is 100% pure natural sea salt. It has no additives,, it has much larger crystals, it’s super briney depth of flavour comes from the fantastic marine environment at Opito Bay being full of trace elements and minerals, including magnesium, calcium and natural iodine. Your average table salt bought by Kiwis, in contrast, is washed, bleached and has chemical iodine added, an anti-caking agent used to stop it clogging up. People also don’t realise that 90% of NZ’s salt is also imported, mostly from Australia.
Because the salt crystals are natural, , the result is a much better taste, but also a product that is better for you in terms of the vitamins and minerals your body is absorbing.
We taste their natural sea salt which true to the description is very salty but also briney and minerally. We then move to their popular Coromandel Kelp sea salt. Perry explains it popular with people who like to eat seafood as its subtle ‘umami’ flavour that doesn’t overpower.. “Salt is supposed to enhance food, not overpower it.
Next, a toasted fennel and thyme flavored salt, with big notes of aniseed combined with the piquancy of thyme. Their smoked chilli packs an incredible punch of smoked chilli. Their Sazon mix is a tribute to a spice mix Perry discovered in his travels through Mexico, and we’ve found since is perfect for coating fish in. But my favourite, their Porcini salt with a wonderful beefy flavour and one the teams says goes well on lamb and risotto or with any vegetable.
It is undisputable, these salts are next level !
The finishing touch, the salt is packed into slick and stylish compostable packaging.
So, what does the future hold for Opito Bay Salt Co.?
Perry says “We want to take our sea salt to New Zealand and the world, its already in a number of different countries now, which is cool. We are very goal driven, there are a lot of goals. And one of them is definitely taking this salt to the world. We both love travelling and we’re looking forward to travelling during the off season and working hard the for 9 months a year….we’ll have to see how that goes
At this point the tasting and interview stops as Perry is called by a local with a friend stuck on the sand, in his car. Perry fires up the tractor Erin & I hop on the back & we go off to rescue the car off the beach.
It certainly looks like there’sgoing to be very few dull days ahead at Opito Bay.