SALT harvested from pans at Whyalla is gracing tables in some of Australia's top restaurants as demand for gourmet products created by Olsson's Salt grows.
The family-owned company, better known for its nutritional supplements for livestock, started marketing its salt flakes about two years ago.
The products have taken off in the food industry, being used by Australia's leading chefs and served to Qantas' first and business class passengers.
Company director Alexandra Olsson said it took her father and the team at Whyalla on the Eyre Peninsula more than 10 years of trials to make the kind of flakes that would standout in market.
Chefs using the salts include Icebergs Dining Room and Bar head chef Monty Koludrovic, Bondi Beach, Aria Restaurant's Matt Moran, Sydney and The Bridge Room's Ross Lusted, Sydney.
Products include the best-selling Truffle Salt, sea salt flakes, macrobiotic salts, salt rubs, crystals, and food processing and industrial use salts.
The company was started by Ms Olsson's grandfather, Norman Olsson, who produced the first salt block in 1949 with his son Charles - Ms Olsson's father - in a shed near Parramatta in NSW.
Drought, which started in 1947 and lasted until 1952, created demand from graziers for supplements to meet the nutritional needs of sheep and cattle.
Ms Olsson's father Charles and his younger brother headed to SA in the 1960s and acquired leases of salt pans at Peesey Swamp near Warooka on the Yorke Peninsula.
"Steel used to be purified with heavy brine, but now it is done with heat so by the end of the 1960s brine wasn't needed anymore," she said.
"Because of the need for brine, steel facilities were often near salt pans and it was through this that my father acquired leases of BHP salt pans at Whyalla."
Olsson's has a block making plant at Whyalla and depots in Adelaide and Mount Gambier.
Salt licks remain a core product of the business.
The company has been at the forefront of ruminant technology, continually developing new and better ways to deliver nutrition to livestock, particularly sheep and cattle.
Ms Olsson hopes the publicity and popularity of Olsson's Salt helps put Whyalla on the map as a tourist destination.
"It really is a beautiful place and has a lot to offer," she said.
The company employs about 90 people at its Whyalla salt works and about 60 more in Qld and NSW.
It is producing 60,000 tonnes of crystal salt and 60t of flaked salt each year but Ms Olsson said they were always increasing production and making pans.
"It takes many years to make a salt pan though; the only ingredients you need are salt water, sun and wind, so depending of the weather, it can take up to six years of laying down a salt bed to make a salt pan," she said.
"We have struck a chord in the gourmet industry and I can't see it stopping.
"And since the cyclone went through Qld causing significant damage to the salt pans and factory there, all salt will be coming out of the EP."
Ms Olsson said the company's key to success was its family focus.
"We are a family company and encourage family members to join if they want to," she said.
"But family is not just about being an Olsson. We encourage the children of the older people in our company who have been with us for decades, and their children, to come on board.
"We team older employees with younger people, a kind of informal mentoring, and it has proven to be a successful way to teach younger people and to pass on traditions and information."