Once one of busiest industrial ports in the country, Swansea Docks in South Wales is today finding a new lease on life supporting a mussel farming industry, something that could never have been imagined in its heyday, when it handled large quantities of coal, metals and petrochemicals.
One of five large docks now destined for alternative use, the 61-hectare Queen’s dock provides sheltered waters and good growing conditions for a new rope-grown mussel farm set up by Thomas Shellfish.
Proprietor Colin Thomas, a veteran of the dredged mussel industry, saw its potential more than a decade ago, but it was only recently that he gained permission to trial a variety of growing methods and set up his new venture.
Thomas’s daughter Melony explained that her father had talked about doing something in the docks for more than ten years, but had just never gotten around to it. “When I went to see the site in 2011, I was blown away by the scale of it and immediately realized that the huge expanse of water offered great potential for a new mussel industry,” she said.
“I got involved to put the finance into place and to help sort out the logistics of growing food in what people perceived as an industrial area, although there is no longer an industry there and equally importantly, there are no sewage outfalls. We worked with an environmental consultant and Swansea University, and many tests later our instincts were proved right, and we found that the water quality was excellent. Not only that, but it has a good spatfall too!”
Following a year’s trial and error using different types of rope and nets, Thomas settled on a continuous rope culture system from Quality Equipment in New Zealand, which he reckons is the best there is.
“We have had a fantastic growth rate and seen mussels grow to full size from spat in less than a year, with high meat yields and excellent quality,” said Thomas. “We hope to harvest 600 metric tons (MT) this year, which is well in advance of where we thought we would be.”
Having proved that the dock is productive, Thomas is forging ahead with expansion plans for the farm, while his daughter is planning to build a processing and packing unit with purification facility on the dock, which will enable Thomas Shellfish to sell direct to the food service and retailer sectors in the U.K.
“At present we are selling in bulk to the Netherlands and France, but developing our own markets makes far more sense financially and will give the company better long-term security,” she explained. “We dipped our toe in the water at ESE in Brussels this year and had some really exciting enquiries for our product, so building the new facility is my next task.”
Keeping business within the family, Thomas’s son-in-law Dave Hancock has been brought in to handle sales. An experienced salesman, he is finding the food business an exciting if challenging new sector to be involved in.
One requirement of many retailers in the U.K. and Europe is for all their seafood supplies to be certified as sustainable. Thomas Shellfish is about to sign up for assessment against the MSC standards, to verify the farm’s credentials, and Melony sees no issues in complying with these.
“We are all really excited by the project and look forward to developing the business over the next few years. One of the advantages of our location is that we are more or less weather-proof, which means we can harvest to order and keep our customers happy, whatever our climate throws at us!” she said.
