Times are hard, and quite frankly, if you’ve been living under a rock lately – in which case you feasibly might not know the name Akaroa Salmon – well, we hear you.
Located in the pristine waters of Wainui, on Banks Peninsula, this award-winning company has been doing the hard mahi of raising chemical and antibiotic-free fish for thirty years and counting.
Akaroa Salmon takes immense pride, and rightly so, in having the smallest environmental footprint of any salmon farm in the world, and the proof is most definitely in the pudding; the quality of their fish is extraordinary, and it’s easy to see why they are the preferred supplier to New Zealand’s top restauranteurs.
Their stock are handfed daily by knowledgeable staff who are alert to any dietary changes that might be required, and when it comes time for their salmon to fulfil their destinies in restaurants all over the country, they are killed and dispatched on the same day for penultimate freshness.
This extraordinary attention to detail and the determination to be the best in the business extends to Akaroa Salmon’s state of the art factory in Wigram, Christchurch, which has been home to the company since 2019.
When owner Duncan Bates went looking for knowledgeable and reputable specialists to help him produce a world-class factory, one of the first people he turned to was Eddie Tirikatene from Panel Door Systems. In an industry that relies so completely on refrigeration, failsafe insulation is everything.
“We chose Eddie because he knows his stuff, he submits realistic quotes, and he’s really grounded. All of the other companies are chasing the really big jobs, but for Eddie, no job is too small, and we find him really easy to work with, nothing is a hassle.”
Eddie and the team supplied all of the panel doors for the new factory, and the relationship with Akaroa Salmon looks set to continue in 2024. Panel Door Systems will be building an insulated panel storage shed over the drive-through area in the main building and Duncan says he can relax in the knowledge that Eddie and his team will get the job done right, and on time.
“We’ve never had to get Eddie back in to fix anything, he’s just bloody good.”
Righto then! You can go back under your rock now.