Down a long rural road, roughly 40 minutes from Martinborough, Troy and Claire of Tora Collective sustainably harvest the freshest kaimoana from the rugged Wairarapa coastline and deliver on the same day to us here at Shepherd.
We had a chat with Troy about what makes Tora Collective special, and some of the challenges of being so remote.
Tell us how Tora Collective started and what makes your seafood special?
We kicked off in spring last year and have been doing this for about eight to ten months. We started Tora Collective because we noticed that you wouldn’t normally see crays and paua on menus around the country. And the stuff that we knew was being sold in the restaurant sector was second and third grade. Especially the crayfish. All the good product was going overseas. As kiwis, we should be getting the best of what our coastline provides.
We built the business around providing the freshest produce possible. So all our Wellington orders are delivered the same day. It just tastes better.
Tora Collective is on the remote Wairarapa coast. What's it like supplying restaurants so far from your home base and how soon do you get it there after it's been caught?
It runs pretty smoothly most of the time. Because it comes straight from the ocean, we have to plan ahead and keep our customers informed about what’s going on as you are messing with Mother Nature and she’s got full control.
How important is sustainability in what you do?
It’s at the core of everything we do. We fish to order, which is such a nice way to fish as you know how much you’re going out there to catch and you’re coming in with just that amount. There’s zero wastage.
We’ve got that knowledge pool around our environment. So we know what fish are down there at certain times of the year. It’s not something you can learn from a sounder.
We also fish everything using pots, including blue cod. They come up onto the boat, with no hooks in their mouths, so they go straight back down in the condition they came up in, in under 30 seconds.
We have also increased the size limit of female crayfish above New Zealand’s legal limit, giving them more, and longer, breeding cycles.
The other thing we built Tora Collective around is sustainable packaging. From the start we wanted to make sure we weren’t using any single use plastics. We created a bit of stress for ourselves by doing this. When we first started we would drive orders to Auckland to avoid using single use plastics.
So now we use seaweed as packaging. And we’re working with a company in Mount Maunganui to create a box that’s laminated with a plant based material. So that means all our packaging will be fully home compostable.
How did lockdown affect you and what did you do to adapt?
With restaurants closed, we sold straight to consumers in the Wellington region. Our plan was to always supply consumers by summer, so we had to move it forward a bit. We really enjoyed it. So many positive things came out of it. It really showed how kiwis look out for each other. People were sending fish to their friends and whanau. They were stoked!
What's the coolest way you've seen your kaimoana used at Shepherd?
We saw that you guys used the packaging seaweed to roast the kumara in. That’s awesome. That seaweed is really good for broths too. It’s really cool to see people using our products, and packaging in different ways. It’s all part of the story.