There are those that will say that salmon farming is difficult or just plain wrong but at Loch Duart we believe differently. If you go through the history of man, you will find almost every advance in human knowledge and almost every form of progress has been implacably opposed by a varying number of people. At Loch Duart we believe that farming the sea is here to stay. By this we mean that we will be farming in pens at sea just as our forefathers learned to farm cattle. A great man once said the opposition to farming at sea is just the same as the opposition to breeding cattle when the first hunters decided to do it. “Those animals will make a mess in the village, kick the kids and eat all of our crops!” Now, of course it is a traditional profession in our countryside.
As our fishing fleets dwindle and the days of the “sea hunter” decline, the future of fish protein as a source of food for us is under threat. Unless we find efficient ways to farm in the sea, we will remove the option for most people to eat fish. This means we have to farm in order to learn how to. Just as importantly, this form of farming must become a way of life for coastal communities, otherwise they too will decline as they have for the last 50 years. Sea fish farming has to become a tradition, just like all the other rural professions – or we will lose these communities.
So when we decided to review our website, this was the brief we gave to our designers and we think that they have come up with a new way of looking at the world.
‘’Since the early 1990s, our original website has been our brochure to the world. It elegantly removed the cumbersome task of taking packages of brochures to the post office to showcase our company’s values and products. Our website served the purpose of being informative – it told the full story of our farming, our ethics and has been an important factor in our international sales development.’’ explains Managing Director Nick Joy.
Much has changed since www.lochduart.com first appeared and, although extended and regularly updated, it has now been replaced by a completely new website which reflects many of the technical advances of the Internet and the requirements of much more sophisticated and demanding audience.
“Firstly, our website design is beautiful, different and challenging. It reflects the success of our business and need for Loch Duart to communicate our values to all interested people throughout the chain of supply. For those of us who grew up without computers it seems amazing that it is required but now our website can be viewed on computer, tablet and smartphone. It still tells the full story of our approach to salmon farming – but does so with the added dimension of a video shot at our Sutherland sites last summer which takes the viewer underwater to meet the fish we farm.”
“We are still a small, independent Scottish salmon farm but we want people to be able to access and understand what matters to us. Our production may be limited but our message is not. Our salmon is well-known – by people, who buy our portions direct as consumers and by those who see it on restaurant menus. Our new website has our farming methods, a library of recipes and listing of restaurants and specialist retail stockists – in fact, everything people interested in farmed salmon of the highest quality need to know,” concludes
Nick Joy.