This article is from page 8 of the 2012-01-17 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 8 JPG
A WEST CLARE company has given Clare food producers a huge boost this week with the news that it has broken into the lucrative American market by supplying its unique seafood products to a high-profile chain of department stores across the country.
Spanish Point Sea Vegetables, operated by the Talty family in Caherush in Quilty, is poised for major expansion on the back of securing a contract to supply the Dean & Deluca chain of stores with its expanding range of seaweed products that are produced and packaged locally.
This move into the international market comes less than three years after the company was established by Ger, Anne and Evan Talty in 2009. It has since undergone rapid expansion in its product range and operation in Caherush. The move into the US market means that the company, which provides products to over 400 shops nationwide, is to be re-branded to meet the new challenges and demands of servicing international customers.
“We are changing the name of the business from Spanish Point Sea Vegetables to Wild Irish Seafoods,” Evan Talty told The Clare People this week. “This is because, outside of County Clare, Spanish Point isn’t really that well known so in America, if it was Spanish Point Sea Vegetables, they’d think it’s coming from Spain, which is no good,” he added. The company started by producing two local delacies, Dillisk and Carrageen, for local health food shops around the county, but in the last year has undergone rapid growth in terms of its products and the range of shops that carry these products. “We have seven or eight different products in the range that we’ve developed. There are hundreds of different types of seaweed but we concentrate on seven, the edible ones. We would supply health food shops, shops like SuperValu, Centra, fish shops. We also supply a product for seaweed baths and, at last year’s Ploughing Championships, we launched an animal feed and a soil conditioner,” revealed Talty.
To facilitate the company’s growth, a new processing plant – which was grant aided by the Clare Leader Programme – has been built, while a number of jobs will be created when the company goes into full production during the summer season after Wild Irish Seafoods is officially launched in the the spring.