Water to Plate Process

It all starts in Winter. When our fishing crew take to the water in search of baby mussels – known as wild spat. We capture the wild spat using a thin stocking and re-seed them onto longline ropes – this gives the mussels plenty of room to grow into their shells.

We use a biodegradable cotton sock to keep the wild spat together as they transfer onto the rope via the byssus thread (also known as the beard). We keep the ropes between 2 -20 metres under the water surface. This means they don’t touch the bottom of the ocean floor – keeping them clean from any sand or grit.

As the mussels mature, they feed off the nutrient-rich waters growing in size and flavour until they are ready for harvest. And whilst this process can take up to 6-12 months depending on the season…it’s well worth the wait as they develop into mouth-watering mussels.

Our skilled fishing crew keep a careful eye on the mussels as they mature. Constantly checking on the condition of the mussels and the water quality. We know it’s time to harvest when the mussels have reached the optimum size of 65mm in length and a minimum of 38% ‘meat-to-shell ratio’.

To harvest we simply remove the long growing lines from the water and strip the fully grown mussels away. We then pass the mussels through an onboard de-clumping tumbler, where the large intertwined clumps are separated. We really care about our mussels… and we know it shows in the final product that ends up on your plate.

As soon as the mussels leave the water we do everything we can to ensure they retain their tenderness and sweet flavour… just as nature intended.

We do this by covering the mussels with ice and storing them in large 500 kg bags on the boat. And we give them an extra dose of seawater until we return to land.

We then transport the harvested mussels to our purpose built mussel processing facility where we give them the royal treatment in cleaning. They are scrubbed and de-bearded before we give them a final clean.

We use a combination of automated processing technology and hand grading to remove any cracked, broken or dirty mussels. Leaving only the finest mussels ready to pack for you to enjoy.

We developed our SeaSure packaging to protect the live mussels. By minimising the stress the mussel endures from water to plate, a premium eating mussel is delivered consistently and continuously.

The final part of the water to plate journey our mussels go on is to package them up and get them on the road – to hit the supermarket or speciality store shelf.

In each packet of our mussels, we add an additional dose of oxygen saturated water to help to recreate the water environment from which the mussels have come, keeping them stress free for 10 days. By reducing the stress, the mussel sweetness is maximised. We then pack and ship the mussels directly to market by refrigerated truck or via airfreight to domestic and international markets.