HELLO SALTY FRIENDS
My name is Greg Beattie I'm the owner here at Hauraki Salt Co. Thank you for taking the time to visit my site. Making sea salt is a passion of mine and sharing this product with you is equally my passion. Growing up here in New Zealand with many summer holidays spent exploring our beautiful coastline, I never would have imagined that I would now be sharing this salty lifestyle with the world. Continue reading below to learn about how I got started, our sustainable salt making process and the benefits of our finishing salt.
Greg Beattie Owner and Salt Maker.
THE LIGHT BULB MOMENT
The idea to start making sea salt came while visiting a local Sunday farmers market. Witnessing a producer cooking up a storm with locally sourced produce and presenting this plate of food to the onlookers with great gusto as ‘The most local plate of food you’ll ever find!” then he reached under his bench to bring out a packet of sea salt from England to sprinkle all over the top. I looked around in almost shock, did anyone else have this sudden light bulb moment! That’s definitely not local! My thoughts then were, why do we not have a local sea salt? and how did sea salt get left out of the artisan movement here in NZ?
As a self employed Landscape Gardener nature has always been an inspiration to me. Trading hours for dollars can only get you so far, I’d always been on the lookout for a nature inspired product based business to better leverage my time. Many ideas came and went over the years. This sea salt idea came to me like a bolt out of the blue and my gut told me this would be the one I’d follow through with. So with much enthusiasm I rushed home via the beach with a bucket of sea water and the journey began.
NEW SOLAR EVAPORATED SEA SALT
Initially launched in 2017, Hauraki Salt Co. produced New Zealand’s first commercially available artisan sea salt. We pressure boiled and evaporated our salt water until demand for our salt outgrew capacity. In 2021 we relaunched our salt with our new solar evaporation process using 100% energy from the wind and sun. A truly sustainable sea salt.
OUR SALT MAKING PROCESS
Our process begins with collecting salt water from the Maraetai coast. Choosing a suitable location during high tide, I extract approximately 500 liters per visit. Once our home base storage tanks are sufficiently filled I proceed to pre-filter the water using sediment filters, carbon filters, and a UV light treatment for purification. The polytunnel, equipped with a black food-grade pond liner plays a crucial role in accelerating the evaporation process by heating the air and surface temperature of the water. The liner is flooded and over a span of several weeks the water level decreases and the salt concentration increases, naturally beautiful salt crystals begin to form. Experience has taught me the best harvesting window to optimize both the texture and taste, plus most importantly a smooth finish, unlike some other salts that can have a bitter aftertaste. I hand harvest the salt by raking and sweeping it into piles, a very satisfying job. Finally further solar drying and dehydration drying to remove any remaining moisture. Lastly, I carefully check the quality of the dried salt before packaging it by hand.
THE PERFECT FINISHING SALT