In the 1950s and 1960s my grandfather was a seaweed buyer, travelling up and down the coast buying Carrageen Moss and bringing it to a factory in Kilrush, Co Clare from where it was sent around the world to make products such as toothpaste and shampoo – seaweed is a natural gelatine. Also, the iodine was extracted to make iodine tablets.
But then that business all went to the Far East where they began to cultivate massive seaweed farms and the factory in Clare closed. Out of the blue in 2008 however, the former factory owner got a call asking if he knew anyone who could supply seaweed. The seaweed community is small so he was able to put him in touch with my grandfather easily.
My grandfather told my father and I what to look for and we collected it. As a result I started researching seaweed and discovered what a great superfood it is. It struck me that it was poorly promoted and marketed here. I reckoned there was a business opportunity in it. My father and I started out in a Portacabin, supplying two types of seaweed, Carrageen and Dillisk, to a few shops.
In 2010 we got Leader funding for a factory to store and dry it and I did a grow your own business course. We took on people to harvest it for us on a daily basis, and expanded our range of products, did the packaging design ourselves, and things just took off.
Today we are sold in supermarkets, gourmet shops, and direct to restaurants all around Ireland and are starting to export abroad.
Japan used to supply 90 per cent of the world’s seaweed but after their nuclear incident people are concerned about eating it, which has provided an opportunity for suppliers like us.
To prepare ourselves for overseas markets we changed the name to Wild Irish Sea Veg, to better capitalise on Ireland’s clean, green image abroad.