When Dunedin resident Bene Stewart was surfing the web, inspiration hit when he watched videos of a Northland-based business making salt in their own backyard.
Inspired, Mr Stewart got in touch and found out how to replicate the process at his own local beach at Blueskin Bay.
"Making salt locally resonated with me because of the idea that we shouldn’t be trucking it around the country when it could be made in each area," he said.
He said salt from Blueskin Bay was flakier than rock and table salt, and was particularly good for American recipes.
This was due to multiple factors such as evaporation, temperature, and concentration of salts in the seawater, he said.
"The salt is much more salty than normal salt is ... when I did taste that first batch I found that it was much saltier than the stuff off the supermarket shelves."
Mr Stewart has aptly called his salt "Blueskin Bay Salt".
He already had some equipment for salt-making; the next step was to expand his set-up from one evaporator to multiple, and to get the food safety side all sorted.
Eventually, he would like to build a salt farm to provide the city with locally-made salt.
He has started a Givealittle page with a goal of $1000 to kickstart the business, and has raised $520 so far.
‘It’s all going towards all of the costs associated with kind of starting a little business — I can just cart the water straight from here up the road, it doesn’t get much more locally made than that."
Mr Stewart said hopefully, Dunedin would find his salt for sale at the Dunedin Farmers’ Market by the second half of this year.
