How technology has helped secure the future of Australian scampi caviar
Eight years ago, Shark Bay Seafoods approached seafood marketing expert Umar Nguyen to see if she wanted to work with them on a new product: scampi caviar. She jumped at the opportunity – how hard could it be? They sent Nguyen simple instructions on how to defrost, remove impurities, salt, and package the eggs in tins. “But then I saw the eggs,” she says.
Female scampi keep their eggs on the outside of their bodies, hidden safely under their tails. When collected, there are often scales, and dead or discoloured eggs, which are soft, white, and mushy. Sorting the impurities and inferior eggs from each batch is a taxing task, and while the product is one of a kind, the laborious nature of the work has come at a cost. But new technology has come into play, which has changed the trajectory of scampi caviar for good.
Nguyen is a chef by trade but decided to leave her kitchen job after becoming burned out by the nature of the work, which often resulted in missing family milestones. She started working for a seafood wholesaler before launching her own business, The Fish Girl, a marketing venture aimed at growing consumer awareness of lesser-known seafoods. Her first client was Jason Simpson, the general manager of Fraser Isle Seafood, who asked if she’d like to take on a national sales and marketing role for the spanner crab segment. “It allowed me to take products to chefs and stay connected to the industry,” she says.
The seafood expert then turned her attention to developing scampi caviar after initial discussions with Shark Bay Seafoods. The Western Australian company has been around for more than 40 years and is renowned for its sustainability focus and use of traditional fishing and by-catch reduction methods. It’s also one of just a handful of companies permitted to catch in Shark Bay, a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Shark Bay Seafood catches scampi off the Western Australian coast in waters that are 200-1,000m deep. The vessels go out for two or three weeks at a time and quick-freeze the catch on board. The eggs vary in colour as the scampi are wild caught, spanning from sapphire to cerulean. “What I learned from the eggs is that every batch is different,” says Nguyen. “They come in all different shades of blue. The beautiful thing about selling this product is that while it’s the same product, each time there are different shades of blue.”
In the first year, Nguyen and her team reached out to some of the top restaurants and chefs in Australia. Initial responses were sceptical. “A lot of them said, ‘Good luck’. They thought it was a novelty item,” says Nguyen. Many chefs had never seen crustacean eggs packaged as a food item and rejected it, but one was particularly interested in the product. “It wasn’t until Josh Niland put it on some oysters that it went crazy.” The product fits well within Niland’s fin-to-tail ethos and challenged the status quo at the time, which saw chefs discard the eggs and then question why they were being charged for the extra weight.
Scampi caviar’s flavour profile is unique to other fish roes, bringing a point of difference to the plate. “It has an oceanic pop to it,” says Nguyen. If you eat it super cold, a nice sea flavour comes through, and the flavour intensifies when it comes to room temperature.”
In its early stages, 100-200kg of eggs were harvested each year, which has now increased to 300-500kg. Nguyen says she hasn’t identified any competitors in the field, particularly not in Australia. “To access scampi eggs, you have to be a primary producer and own quota for the scampi,” she says.
The niche industry is heavily dependent on Nguyen, but recently came under threat when she suffered carpal tunnel in her arm from the repetitive process of selecting the ideal eggs and cleaning debris. “I thought I was being weak and it was mind over matter, but my brain was warning me of danger,” says Nguyen. “I did a CT scan and the doctor said, ‘Whatever you’re doing, you need to stop’.”
Nguyen has sustained permanent damage to her left arm, along with shoulder issues and two slipped discs in her spine. The injuries are the consequence of the repetitive strain of the work. Nguyen used tweezers to manually remove impurities as well as dead or orange scampi eggs. The doctors warned Nguyen that if she didn’t take a break, she may need an operation which would force her to take months off. “I got really depressed and I had to find a solution,” she says.
Last year, Arm Hub approached Nguyen to join their Female Founder Acceleration course. The six-month program is run in partnership with the Queensland Government and helps a small number of female founders of Queensland-based technology and manufacturing companies to develop technologies that will assist with the scaling of their businesses. The program helped Nguyen develop a machine that would reduce the need for tweezers.
The machine, which Nguyen affectionately refers to as “Bernie”, is crafted from a dental aspirator (the machine dentists use when they require suction). A tiny nozzle sized for scampi eggs is fitted on the machine, and allows the precise retrieval of the eggs. The nozzle is controlled by a custom hand grip and a foot pedal, which reduces the strain on Nguyen’s arms. “Instead of using tweezers and constantly lifting over the drum sieve and removing one egg at a time, we just flatten out the eggs and move the suction to suck everything up,” says Nguyen.
Flattening out the eggs with a spoon or palette knife on the drum sieve allows Nguyen to identify impure and discoloured eggs, which she then suctions into a different container and disposes of. Bernie’s assistance hasn’t seen a change in the speed with which Nguyen can prepare the eggs, but it has increased the accuracy and amount of time she can work for. “Not only does Bernie limit my pain, but she can keep going and not get tired, and she doesn’t get cold in the cold room,” laughs Nguyen.
For Nguyen, the development is a game changer. It has allowed her to continue working with the unique product without having to worry. Looking forward, The Fish Girl is cryptic, but she promises there’s more to come. “We still have another phase we’re going to work on this year. I’ll let you know when it’s ready.”
The post How technology has helped secure the future of Australian scampi caviar appeared first on hospitality | Magazine.