China and Irish oysters: A salty love story

"Irish oysters are the best in the world because of clean water," Hugh O'Malley tells CGTN at the family home in Ennis, Co. Clare, in the west of Ireland.

When he and his wife Fiona founded Achill Oysters in 2014, little did they know that it'd be customers on the other side of the planet opening up a new world of possibilities.

Hugh O'Malley hails from the fifth generation of a fishing family on Achill Island – a beautiful green island off the coast of Mayo, where, famously, there are more sheep than people – and made a massive career change almost a decade ago, from big tech to aqua tech.

Working in Dublin and commuting home at the weekends, "he hardly knew his own children," Fiona says. Now the business has 16 people on the payroll and a turnover of over half a million dollars, and the entire family is involved.

"My dad is 85 and in the last 18 months he stopped driving for me but he's still the director of the company," says Hugh. "My children work, my wife works, my mother is sustenance to everybody and advisor to all, and is still driving and running people around."

Shucking the Chinese market has been a game-changer.

"When we started doing business in China, it trebled our market immediately," continues Hugh. "We went from producing relatively small batches for local restaurants to, all of a sudden, putting two and a half tonnes on a plane out to China. Our Chinese partners are the best."

How did China fall in love with Irish oysters?

Sales of Irish shellfish have almost doubled in the past year as Chinese demand for premium seafood, particularly brown crab and oysters, continues to grow.

"The image that Ireland puts forward is authentic," says Hugh of the country's green, clean island image, pointing out that the oysters are good for the environment too: they clean the bay and filter water, needing no feed or toxic pesticides.

"The water is really, really clean, super A class water is what surrounds us, there's no pollution in it and there's a very low population in the area making for very, very clean oysters, you can go down and eat the oysters straight off the farm. They taste stunning."

CGTN takes on its journalistic responsibility and does just that and can confirm that Hugh is not lying. Delicious fresh oysters on a pristine, empty Achill beach, and they can be on a plate in Guangzhou or Shanghai in as little as 36 hours.

Another reason behind this success story is the hard work done by Ireland's semi-state body Bord Bia that promotes Irish produce, and the improvement of the logistic lines that allows the food to travel fast and fresh to its destination.

Rough seas ahead?

Achill Oysters has faced its fair share of challenges too, however. Red tide is a harmful algae bloom that starves sea life of oxygen near the shore.

Fiona explains that oysters grow from tiny seeds to fully mature oysters in approximately three and a half years, nourished by the nutrient-rich waters that flow through their farming beds, but red tide can wipe out years of work in weeks.

She recalls Hugh sitting with bags and bags of oysters trying to salvage the few that stayed alive with a tear in his eye – "imagine being an oyster," he said.

Now the industry faces more turbulence as jet fuel prices have soared following the Iran war, despite the uneasy peace.

"Jet fuel is double the price," says Chad Huang, Managing Director of Jade Aviation, a Chinese businessman who's made Ireland his home.

Huang is a big fan of Irish oysters too: "The best in the world," he says, "I always order them if I'm in the west of the country, and the rest of China is discovering them too."

But that trade could be in trouble. 

"Ireland may cancel one million flights within this year," he says.

The potential disruptions in logistics from the Middle East will not be solved immediately by the unstable peace agreement and Huang insists they pose a significant threat to the export business. Resilience, though, is another thing that grows well in the west of Ireland.

"We have pressures with jet fuel," says Hugh O'Malley, "but we have multiple options for logistics, including direct shipments to China or routes through the Middle East."

Around here, they say rough seas make better oysters.