Fleur de sel… An expression that brings beautiful images to the mind. But very few people really know what it is all about. This luxury product, considered as caviar among salts, was originally harvested in Brittany, France. It is the fruit of a natural phenomenon that happens during the production of sea salt. During the dry months of the year, transparent crystals blossom on the surface of the brine at dawn. Those flowers are delicately harvested by hand, to preserve the thin structure of the crystal, and sundried. This product only represents 4% of the whole production of a saltpan. Its scarcity and the labour required make of it a very expensive product.

Nutrisco Lted, a free port company created two years ago to export salt from India and Madagascar to western countries, recently decided to market fleur de sel from Mauritius. André Koenig, CEO of this company, wants to both sell it locally and export it. It is a double challenge: first, he has to promote it in Mauritius, explain its properties to consumers that are not always ready to spend more money for a basic daily product. “It is not something you are supposed to use like regular sea salt. Fleur de sel is mostly used as a condiment that you add to a dish at the last minute. You have to feel it under your teeth”, says André Koenig.

As the product is launched in Mauritian supermarkets this week, France Raffray, who is in charge of the marketing, will meet consumers in the stores and convince them to taste this luxury salt. This week, she is in London supermarket (Black-River). She was positively surprised how this product was welcome by the Mauritian market.

But she is conscious that Fleur de Sel cannot be afforded by everybody in Mauritius. That is why the company mostly targets tourists, who have a higher purchasing power. Nutrisco is thus developing a whole range of products, with delicate packaging for hotel stores.

The second challenge is to build an image and reputation for Mauritian Fleur de sel on the international market to compete with the one from Guérande, in Brittany, already well-known by connaisseurs all over the world. For André Koenig, this is not a problem: “Anyway, Guérande cannot produce enough of this product anymore to satisfy the demand. And our strategy is to stress on exoticism.” A good sales argument for consumers in western countries, who are always looking for exotic and tropical images.