From Alaska to Cornwall; from the Azores to Fraserburg in the far North of Scotland; from Riga to Matosinhos, facing the Atlantic to the left of Porto; in the Rias of Galicia or on the Coast of Cantabria; we’ve got our feet wet in the sea and on land.  But we’ve kept our soul happy, our heart warm and our humour dry. 

For 25 years we’ve been working with some of the best stories in tinned fish, but we are meticulous about sourcing and surprised at how many people aren’t – we’ve given up on a few “opportunities” when we’ve found out the fish origins were suspect, or our prospective supplier was being a little bit evasive with their answers! 

The whole concept of quality artisan produced tinned fish originates and belongs to the Iberian Peninsula, where many small and large producers, some with histories going back 200 years, continues to thrive: we call it Conservas Culture.  In the last three years, this Spanish and Portuguese phenomenon has been celebrated in glossy magazines, Sunday supplements and tinned fish features.  It’s true they do take it seriously there – beautiful packaging and a huge range of seafoods. In Spain the tinned fish section of supermarkets is a whole aisle long! 

We’ve been working with Spanish and Portugese canneries for several decades. We’ve been to the auction houses on the quays where officials count in and tag the catch, we’ve met local fishers, seen local ladies knee deep in sand when the tide goes out to pick clams and shells, visited the mussel platforms in the various rias of Galicia, North of Vigo, been invited to tiny seafood shacks where only locals eat and done the forensic checks on our cannery partners.  We’ve even been known to call a local Cofradias or science official out of the blue and boarded boats in the harbour to make sure we know our fishers.

In the Azores we work closely with our Island cannery, the tuna is caught near the various islands of this magical archipelago in late spring and summer and in the height of the fishing season, boats land the fish directly outside the cannery.  The Azores only fish 100% pole & line.  There is nothing else around and to cap it all there’s an incredible scientific program that has been live for over 40 years, collecting tons of data, with observers on board and close oversight from the Ministry of Fisheries based in the island of Faial.  This is an incredibly sustainable, socially positive fishery and the benefit is not just to the environment but in the incredible quality of the tuna packed in every tin. 

Out anchovies come from the MSC certified fishery in Northern Spain off the Basque and Cantabrian coast.  Cantabria is a pedigree mark for anchovies.  Fished much like sardines, it’s the intricacy of the processing that is important here.  Anchovies are kept in large vats of salt to mature for 6 months, the salt then needs to be washed off and each tiny fish is then carefully filleted by hand, a laborious and skilled process.  After this it’s packed in oil and in the jars.  These anchovies are not heat processed: they are preserved by the salting.  In hot weather, it is advisable to keep them in cold storage.

Sardines are eponymous with Portugal.  And so, to Matosinhos.  Last time we visited, it was grey and dull with heavy bursts of rainfall.  Our cannery partner is 5th generation and has more than 200 years of canning history.  We visited a modern facility, very efficient and well run, with a good attitude to worker’s health and wellbeing, even stretching to the provision of an on-site nursery and most surprising of all, a vast array of solar panels that provide a stunning 60% of the factory’s energy.  The sardines are landed in the nearby Port, caught by a co-operative of fishers we visited over a decade ago, but our factory will also

deal with similar co-operatives based along the Atlantic coast that use the same technique of locating a shoal of sardines with echo sounders and then setting a small net around the shoal if it turns out to have the right profile in terms of size of fish.  Boats are locally owned and managed and are essentially day boats, although in fact they go out at night, when the sardines rise to the surface of the water, returning at dawn and never venturing far from the coastline.  The Portuguese sardine fishery has had several fallow years, having been hit by overfishing and poor stock management.  The stocks are recovering and better managed and so it’s a pleasure to be backing this historic fishery and to be working with what we can only define as the sardine nobility.

Carefully crafted, deliciously made, scrupulously sourced, canned fish you can trust!