Goolwa Pipico is working to make inroads for its Marine Stewardship Council (MSC)-certified clams in Europe after refining its processing to deliver an improved product.
Goolwa Pipico harvests its product, called Kuti or pipi, on the coast of South Adelaide, Australia. Harvesters fish for the small clams on a 70-kilometer surf beach, where groups of two to four people rake at the sand using a net and their feet to collect the product with the tide.
The catch is then brought back to Goolwa Pipico’s facility to be sorted by size. The company, which is a fisherman’s cooperative, is also 30 percent owned by the native Ngarrindjeri people, who have harvested the clams for at least 19,000 years based on archaeological evidence in the area.
Goolwa Pipico Sales and Marketing Director Sam Jeffries told SeafoodSource during Seafood Expo Global – running from 6 to 8 May in Barcelona, Spain – that the isolated environment, catch method, and species all contribute to the quality of the product.
“We believe we’ve got the best clams in the world,” Jeffries said.
The company is now working to reach more export markets after refining its processing process to deliver a sand-free product.
“We have a new world-class filtration system, which is just brilliant because it de-sands totally,” Jeffries said.
In the past, the company wasn’t as capable of completely de-sanding its clams, which made the sales pitch much harder.
“We’d talk about that story to the nth degree; people would taste the pipi, and there’d be a little bit of sand in it,” Jeffries said.
That was usually a dealbreaker, but the new equipment, which the company installed and dialed in in early 2025, has changed that. The company is now capable of delivering a much cleaner product.
“It was just getting the processing right. The clam hasn’t changed,” Jeffries said. “But, now we’ve got a sand-free beautiful product that’s ready to take on the world.”
Now, the company has a sand-free product, a great story, and is working to expand its markets beyond its current ones.
The company already sells to the Middle East, Singapore, Hong Kong, and domestically in Australia but is looking to gain inroads in Spain and Italy which Jeffries called “the clam-eating center of the universe.”
The company recently secured all the necessary governmental permissions to begin targeting customers in Europe.
“That’s all happened pretty quickly overall; the timing was good to come here [Seafood Expo Global] and finally debut on it,” Jeffries said.
