Wester Ross nets prime time exposure on BBC

The UK’s oldest independent salmon farmer UK starred in TWO programmes on different BBC channels during prime viewing time yesterday.

In Nadiya’s Time To Eat on BBC2, Wester Ross managing director Gilpin Bradley took celebrity cook Nadiya Hussain - who shot to fame after winning The Great British Bake Off in 2015 - to the Ardmair Farm located in Loch Kannaird near Ullapool.

Bradley also popped up on BBC Alba’s Trusadh series, in a programme dedicated to Torah na Mara (aquaculture) that also featured Scotland’s largest salmon farmer, Mowi.

Sustainable farming

In Nadiya’s Time To Eat, Hussein and Bradley spent most of the day on the farm, hand-feeding the salmon and talking about sustainable farming of the seas.

Hussain then prepared two salmon poké bowls on a nearby beach which she and Bradley enjoyed on screen.

The last stop of the day was at the company’s processing facility in Dingwall where Hussein learned how to fillet and pin-bone salmon from the Wester Ross professionals who hand-clean, hand-fillet and hand-pack all the company’s fish.

Bradley said: “Being on Nadiya’s Time To Eat was not just a good promotion for our salmon but also for the whole Ullapool and Wester Ross area.”

BBC Alba’s Trusadh episode was an hour-long look at the business of salmon farming, featuring the little and large of Wester Ross (1,800 to 2,000 tonnes per year) and Mowi Scotland (60,000 tonnes).

Bradley and Wester Ross fish health and development manager, Matthew Zietz, showed the filmcrew around the Ardmair Farm and explained in detail various ways of how sustainable farming shapes everyday life on the Wester Ross farms, from hand-feeding to careful harvesting.

“It’s a pleasure to work in this environment,” said Zietz.

Bradley put his company’s niche market position in Scotland into perspective by saying that if the high-volume producers were a cake, then “we are not even the icing on the cake; we are the sprinkles on the top of the icing on the cake”.

The factual programme – one of the most salmon farming-friendly the BBC has produced in recent times – also featured Mowi farm manager Donald M MacLennan, who was able to explain the industry to BBC Alba’s Gaelic-speaking target audience in their own language.

The programme showed smolts being stocked at West Loch Tarbert, Harris, among other aspects of salmon farming, and also featured both halibut and shellfish farming.

Both programmes can be seen on BBC iPlayer. Watch Nadiya’s Time To Eat here, and Trusadh here.