Superior smoked salmon from Northern Ireland's Glenarm Organic

Glenarm Organic Salmon, Northern Ireland's only Atlantic fish farm, has launched a new superior smoked product. The organic smoked salmon carries forward the company's success in supplying fresh salmon to high-end restaurants and hotels from San Francisco to London, Dubai and Hong Kong.

The new salmon is the first move by the company, based at Glenarm in county Antrim, into premium value-added products and has been influenced by the demand from existing customers in particular for such a development.

"We've taken our time in developing the smoked salmon because we wished to get the right cure to ensure a really distinctive flavour," says John Russell, Glenarm Organic Salmon managing director.

"We worked with an experienced local curer, Ewings in Belfast which has been smoking fish, salmon, for over a century, to create a unique flavour of a premium product. Ewings has also been smoking our salmon for a number of years using their own kiln and has won a Great Taste Award for the product. Our smoked salmon features a cure that we've developed with Ewings and is quite different. We will continue to supply Ewings with salmon as well as marketing our new smoked product.

"It's also required substantial investment in quality packaging formats such as high-end gift boxes and marketing. In addition to supplying foodservice outlets, we see tremendous opportunities to develop high-end retail business. To enable us to harness the product's potential especially as a gift incentive, we have developed a very distinctive wooden box that emphasises the quality of the salmon.

"What sets our smoked salmon apart is the total control over farming, harvesting, curing and distribution operations. The salmon also benefits enormously from the location of the farms in the healthy and invigorating waters of the Atlantic," he adds

The company strengthened its marketing team ahead of the launch of the new product that's seen as important to the growth of the business and has been marketing the smoked salmon at international events.

"Developing a portfolio of value-added products was always at the core of our strategy for the growth of the business in medium and long terms. While we are working on a number of new products, our focus will be on developing business for the smoked salmon."

The company, formed in 2008, currently supplies 95 per cent of its fresh and frozen salmon to customers, mostly in foodservice, in 25 countries.