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Friday 22 Nov 2013 @ 10:15
Innovate UK
Innovate UK
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Full steam ahead for Hebridean Sea Salt
Natalie Crayton has taken just over three years to go from being a stay-at-home mother of three children under five to one of the main employers in the remote town of Habost South Lochs on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland.
So far that only means four people, but in a place where nearly everyone has a 60-mile round trip to work because there are so few jobs, that is no small achievement. And Natalie has big ambitions. She aims eventually to employ 10-15 staff at Hebridean Sea Salt.
It is early days yet; the start-up has only been trading since July 2012. But it was funding from the Technology Strategy Board that helped turned Natalie's inspiration into a business.
Natalie got the idea for Hebridean Sea Salt when she was living on the even more remote Isle of Tiree.
‘I had read about Cornish sea salt and what companies were doing. I tried to source Scottish sea salt for my own cooking and realised there wasn't any. The idea grew from there,' said Natalie.
Natalie was convinced that there was a business in locally produced sea salt.
‘The current market for UK-produced sea salt stands at £10m per year. It has shown growth of almost 10% per year while sales of traditional processed table salts are falling,' said Natalie.
Recipe for success
And she knew they had the ingredients for a great product.
‘The sea around the Hebrides is immaculate and carries a Grade A certification which means it is as clean as you can get,' Natalie said.
That did not mean it was going to be easy.
‘We took a pan of sea water and boiled it. From five litres of water we got a handful of salt and it wasn't nice. It was bitter. I knew from what I'd read that we'd have to experiment and that we'd have to become commercial. Otherwise we would have got nothing back from a lot of work and a big electricity bill.'
Natalie was so sure she was on to a winning idea that she moved her family from Tiree to Lewis to make it happen.
‘There was no infrastructure in Tiree. We're still in the middle of nowhere but we're nearer a big town now.'
But she knew that getting the innovative equipment in place to product the sea salt in an environmentally sustainable way required more capital than she had at her disposal.
‘We knew it would be expensive because we want to use equipment that will recycle energy already spent. And it has to be made from special metals because the salt itself is so corrosive. It has to be custom made,' said Natalie.
Click Here for the full success story and further information.
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