From The Salt Barons Desk

Welcome to our blog! This is the first of what will become a regular feature of our blog.

We want to use this blog to keep you up to date with what we are up to here at our boutique salt works in Taipa. Some may say these are merely the musings of a slightly mad middle aged man, and of course they are entirely correct.

Well what a week last week was. The final push to our big launch saw frantic efforts to get our market stall finished, and late nights making and bagging up our end product. But in the end it was all well worth the effort. Our first market was just a little bit scary, but by the end of the day it was great to get to tell people about our products and processes and to let them taste our salt. Of course, we didn’t lose sight of the end goal which was to sell our salt and we would like to thank all of those customers who purchased from us. You are foundation customers for life. Thanks to all of the team at the Kerikeri Packhouse Market, we had an excellent posy right at the main entrance.

In addition to the market our website platform went live. My daughter Katie lives in London but had taken on the task of heading up our social media campaigns and the website. She pushed the go button right on time at 9am NZ time and stayed up late to tackle the minor glitches that inevitably appeared. Thanks to those who gave us a heads up on any problems so that we could fix them and of course to all of you who placed an order. It is early days for “The Pig,” but we are looking forward to watching our little business develop.

A special thanks to my family for all of your help and support during the long process we have been through to get here. We couldn’t have done it without you.

So now the launch is done its on with the normal weekly work. First order of business is to add to the market stall. It was a blistering day last Saturday and we quickly discovered that our stand, while funky and functional, lacked one key essential element….SHADE!!!! So, we will be extending the back-end canopy to make sure we don’t fry again next Saturday.

On the production front the water I put in two weeks ago has already started to turn to salt. The top layer of our wall-based evaporator is ready for harvest, as is the top layer of salt Vap II. The small tanks surrounding our main big tank are just about ready as well, so it will be a big week of harvesting salt and moving tanks up through the production process. At this rate we will have harvested this batch of salt within three weeks of it being decanted into the evaporation tanks. If that happens it will be a new Taipa Salt Pig record.

We also have one additional and essential task to complete this week and that is to send a sample of our end product to Assure Quality in Auckland to check for any contamination. We know from previous tests that our process kills any bacteria that may be present when the water samples are initially tested. We are only legally required to do these tests three times a year but in these early stages it’s always nice to have a final check of each batch. Just for peace of mind.

Well that’s it for this first blog, bit boring I know, but really its hard to make what is a very simple process sound rivetingly interesting. Will sign off now and go and get the latest orders all packed and ready for shipping.

Thanks again to everyone for your kind words and support……. The Pig Says Cheers

James