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Sanford’s Big Glory Bay salmon farm expanded from 16 to 24 pens in 2021, and the company is focusing on high-end US restaurants and retail. [File photo]
Investment from Sanford will create jobs in Bluff and strengthen the company’s targetting of high-end US restaurants and retailers.
A new $1.2 million machine that uses X-ray to find bones and cuts around the bones using water jets is now in the company’s Bluff factory, and work is underway for the accompanying $300,000 packaging machine and conveyer belts.
The machine also cuts fillets to an exact size.
Site manager Sarah Bynevelt said the investment could create 10 new jobs in the next two to three years but would not lead to job losses. There were currently 75 staff in Bluff, she said.
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The upgrades represented a “really exciting” investment from Sanford in Southland, Bynevelt said.
Sanford international sales general manager Blair Robinson said the investment would bolster the company’s position with high-end restaurants and retailers in the US.
North American business was 10 per cent of Sanford’s revenue in 2020. That increased to 17 per cent in 2021.
Although mussels were the significant driver of that, salmon sales to the US were a continued focus for Sanford, Robinson said.
“The US is the biggest market in the world for salmon consumption.”
Kavinda Herath/Stuff
Sanford Bluff site manager Sarah Bynevelt said recent machinery investments meant jobs at the factory.
The US food service sector had bounced back well from the pandemic, he said, business with white cloth dining was strong and in the past 12-months Sanford had sped-up a diversification to high-end retailers.
“We have changed focus a little bit through the pandemic.”
US Covid-19 restrictions meant many businesses were doing takeaway only for a time, which brought about the speeding up of that strategy, he said.
“Our salmon isn’t in Costco, it’s in boutique regional retailers, such as Harmons in Utah and Yokes [in Oklahoma]”.
The flexicut portion machine cuts fillets to exact size by X-ray, for example an 180 gram portion with a 10 gram variance.
“That’s a massive step forward in the capability we’ve had before,” Robinson said.
House of An own high-end Vietnamise-French fusion restaurants across California in Beverly Hills, San Francisco, Santa Monica and Orange County, and use Sanford salmon.
House of An corporate chef Peter Coenen said boneless fillets and exact portions helped them greatly in a busy restaurant, as only a couple of people were allowed to fillet whole fish.
The quality and price point of Sanford salmon was comparable and sometimes even better than the popular Alaskan wild king salmon, Coenen said.
Dining in California had fully come back since Covid-19 lockdowns in March and August to October 2020, but with masks and proof of vaccination needed.
“It’s good to see the industry kind of starting to move forward again.”
“It was pretty dire.”
The biggest issue at the moment was a shortage of product and “sky-rocketing” prices because of the global pandemic, Coenen said.
