I have been in the Australian Seafood industry since I was a child.
And so, instead of talking about how old my company is, I am going to tell you about my first job as a teenager: driving the unloading boom on my dad's deep sea trawler. Or my second job: being a part of the processing line turning squid into tubes and rings to make Australia's first fully Australian crumbed squid ring destined for the food service market.
And then I am going to tell you that while I notionally had separate and distinct careers in between as an adult, I have never really left the seafood industry, always remaining within my family's business and caring passionately about Australian seafood.
The passion perhaps amplified by my other career, working as an international trade lawyer and understanding practically what Australia's competitive advantage looks like when it comes to pristine, sustainable Australian Seafood.
But I do have to admit, that the whole concept for Wild South came about because I wanted to eat 'the good stuff'. I wanted to know where my seafood was coming from. I wanted to know that it was fresh. I wanted to access it every day of the week. I also wanted to provide Australian seafood consumers with a lot more transparency around their seafood supply chains, and the ability to ask questions about where their seafood comes from, to know how its been handled, to know how long it has been between being caught and ending up on the table, to know both where its caught, and where its processed.
And so, given what I knew about how and when fishing boats fish, transport arrangements from regional Australia and retail practices around 'fresh' seafood, the only way to guarantee my wish list was to portion size, vacuum pack and snap freeze at the source. I also knew that there were very limited opportunities for this to happen; for a couple of reasons. One, because of the necessity of infrastructure, and relationships 'on the wharf'. Fortunately, my family owned those components. I am working on the second part - to educate the Australian fish eating population that fresh, unfrozen, premium Australian fish is fantastic as well as premium super fresh frozen fish. And that fresh and frozen (and premium) are all synonymous.
So that is my seafood journey; from always wondering how fresh my fish was and where it came from, to Never Again. And here's cheers to that.
Amy Elleway
Founder and Managing Director
