Promoting mussels one shell of a job

In the third of a five-part series in the lead up to the Havelock Mussel Festival this Saturday, SOPHIE PREECE talks to Havelock-based Hairy Mussel Company which is determined to ensure its product gets the treatment it deserves.

It's one of the most eco-friendly farmed seafoods in the world and it's unique to New Zealand. Tim MaddenTim Madden lifts the lid on a steaming pot of wine and garlic and throws a handful of bearded greenshell mussels into the brew.

Minutes later, the shells are gaping, the mussels are cooked, and he's poured them into a bowl with a flourish. "It's just too easy," he says with a grin, typically enthusiastic about the hirsute mollusc he's trying to reinvent.

Tim and his partner, Helen Johnston, have made it their business to put mussels in more shopping bags, and on more menus and tables in New Zealand.

"It's one of the most eco-friendly farmed seafoods in the world and it's unique to New Zealand. We should treat it more like an iconic product than a commodity," says Tim.

The Havelock-based Hairy Mussel Company pays top price for the best mussels off farms in the Coromandel and Marlborough Sounds, packs them carefully in poly bins and sends them to restaurants, supermarkets and direct to households throughout the country.

It's about reinventing a product that deserves far greater respect than it has been given, says Tim, who has 20 years experience in the mussel industry.

"I spent years on boats watching mussels going up conveyers and wondering why they weren't treated better on the local market.

"In a very small way, we are trying to lift the value for the grower and increase the perception of mussels. Make people realise how good they are."

A key step in getting fresh mussels into more shopping bags is to get them into more supermarkets. Tim worked with operations manager Neil Mythen to develop Hairy Hotels for supermarkets without recirculating water tanks, using a system where ice and salt drip through on to the live mussels below. The hotels have enabled Tim and Helen to get their mussels into towns such as Wanaka, where they were simply not on the menu for lack of display and storage facilities.

Wanaka New World seafood manager Raewyn Rich says people have loved the introduction of mussels and she has had trouble keeping up with demand.

"It's a great wee hotel. They're very happy mussels," she says.

Tim says there has been some customer resistance to the Hairy Hotels, with off-track assumptions about what makes a healthy, happy mussel. Their whole live mussels are sent out of the Havelock pack house 5 degrees Celsius warmer than export mussels, which is closer to their natural environment, says Tim.

"Some people forget this isn't a fillet of fish.

"It's a live shellfish and it's used to kicking round at 20C or in the sun at 30C."

Meanwhile, while some supermarket customers demand mussels from a tank with recirculating water, the cool, salty, damp environment of the Hairy Hotels is far closer to their natural environment, he says.

It's a long, slow haul to educate those who have not eaten mussels and re-educate those who have, but Tim and Helen's passion and initiative has seen the Hairy Mussel's sales bloom from their first order of five kilograms seven years ago, to 700 tonnes a year.

They have also produced the Hairy Hussel, a tomato-based, smoked-paprika flavour pouch that can be added to mussels at home.

The next step is in getting mussels into restaurants with a mini-version of the Hairy Hotel.

Helen says chefs in Marlborough and Nelson, where most of New Zealand's mussels are grown, should make sure they have mussels on their menu, just as they would serve up Marlborough wines.

"Once you've given them a little scrub up, they're too easy."

- The Marlborough Express