A NEW WORLD FOR LINDISFARNE OYSTERS (July 2008)


The North East’s only oyster farm expects to open up a world of new customers following heavy investment in a French-built oyster barge that operates on land and sea, plus new grading and purification equipment and other improvements.

Lindisfarne Oysters, based between Ross, near Bamburgh, and Holy Island in north Northumberland, has stepped up production of its Pacific rock oysters known as gigas which are already on the menus of leading hotels in Newcastle, Edinburgh and London, and locally at the Seafield Restaurant in Seahouses.

A recent red tide, or algae bloom, which caused toxins among shellfish in the area and led to a halt in oyster production, has passed. Environmental scientists have given the all-clear and oysters are once again being despatched from Ross in large quantities to wholesalers who supply the country’s top restaurants. The company, which is run by husband and wife Christopher and Helen Sutherland, also has an expanding mail order trade run through its own website, www.lindisfarneoysters.co.uk.

The recent purchase of the specialist oyster barge built by SAS Mulot Navale, of La Tremblade, France, and a new grading machine which can sort hundreds of oysters by size in a matter of hours instead of the days it took by hand, have revolutionised production at the oyster farm which Christopher and Helen took over from his father, John, in 2003. The reinforced aluminium barge, which weighs one-and-a-half tons, has wheels which enable it to be pulled by tractor from the Sutherlands’ home farm some two miles away to the mudflats next to the Holy Island causeway, where the oysters are reared in plastic mesh bags on trestles. It also has an outboard motor for use in deeper waters or it can be pushed along in the shallows by Christopher and his helpers.

The barge was 40 per cent funded by the Marine and Fisheries Agency, part of DEFRA. Christopher also invested in a trestle lifter made in Berwick by engineers, James H. Wood, of East Ord Industrial Estate. It has proved invaluable in easing up trestles loaded with bags of oysters which would otherwise sink into the sands.

Christopher has also improved the track running from the home farm to the oyster beds. “It can still be quite a bumpy ride but it’s much better than it was when we used a Land Rover and trailer to transport the oysters. Now that we’ve got the barge, which in effect is a boat with wheels, we don’t have to go backwards and forwards so many times between the oyster beds and the shore, which is a positive advantage for the environment,” he said.

With a second purification plant ready to join the existing tank where oysters are thoroughly washed for 42 hours in water which is bathed in ultra-violet light, new premises have had to be found for the process in another part of the mixed arable and cattle farm which the Sutherland family has farmed since 1936.

As a result of all this investment Lindisfarne Oysters will now be able to supply oysters daily, subject to the tides, which will enable them to increase their current output of 2,500 to 3,000 oysters each week. In recent weeks the farm has taken delivery of 200,000 seed oysters from Guernsey which, in two-and-a-half years’ time, when they reach maturity, will grace the dinner plates of gourmet restaurants up and down the country. “Lindisfarne Oysters have a surprisingly distinctive flavour when cooked, and a few can be used to great effect in dishes such as omelettes, steak and kidney pies and fish chowder,” says Helen.

For the past five years Christopher has concentrated mainly on production, leaving sales and marketing to Helen. However, he very much enjoys attending farmers’ markets and food events whenever he can, and he intends to do more representational work in future. To this end, he has renewed Lindisfarne Oysters’ membership of Northumbria Larder, the lead organisation in the North East England Food and Drink Group which supports regional food producers at trade and consumer shows both regionally and nationally.

“We have come a long way in the past five years and we look forward to even better things in the future, “ say Christopher and Helen, who have three children, Harry, 6, Arthur, 4, and Daphne, 15 months.