“You’ve got to have some luck sometime”. Akaroa Salmon started to supply the international meal-kit company before the pandemic.
Many salmon sellers have lost up 95 per cent of their trade due to the shutdown of the HORECA trade.
New Zealand-based Akaroa Salmon had their bacon saved when it entered into an agreement with the meal-kit giant Hello Fresh before COVID-19 took hold. According to a press release, between July and September 2019, the company delivered 69 million meals to 2.6 million customers worldwide.
Stuff reports that 80 per cent of the company’s customer base of restaurants and hospitality businesses has closed.
But now some lost revenue has been made up thanks a salmon supply deal where Hello Fresh is buying thousands of units of fish. “Now we are supplying them once every two weeks which is just terrific. It’s meaningful revenue when you haven’t got a lot,” managing director of Akaroa Salmon Duncan Bates told the publication.
One of pioneers of salmon farming in the country, Bates has been operating Akaroa Salmon for over three decades in the Canterbury region of New Zealand.
“You’ve got to have some luck sometime. Hello Fresh was one of the few customers that continued to operate,” Bates added.
Founded in Germany in 2011, HelloFresh operates in the US, the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Australia, Austria, Switzerland, Canada and Sweden. It expanded its production with facilities in New Zealand by more than ten times with a new 9,000-square-metre site distribution centre in February.
