Our Mission , Silva Salt

Why Silva Salt exists

The craft is the mission

Silva Salt is the premium artisanal sea salt for serious home cooks. Behind every jar is a simpler commitment: the salt is hand-harvested in Figueira da Foz by a handful of small, independent producers, using the sun, the wind and the tides, exactly as it has always been made.

To keep making salt this good, that craft and those producers have to stay at work. That is the whole of the mission.

Archival photograph of workers harvesting the salt pans of Figueira da Foz, carrying salt by the basket

How it was

Worked the same way for generations

For more than a century, the salt gardens of Figueira da Foz were worked by whole communities through the summer, raking the pans and carrying the salt in by the basket.

It was slow, skilled, seasonal work, shaped entirely by the sun, the wind and the tides.

Archival photograph of the salt harvest in the pans of Figueira da Foz, Portugal

The harvest

By hand, then as now

The tools were simple and the method plain: let the Atlantic fill the pans, let the sun draw the water off, and gather the crystals that form.

It is the same work Silva Salt's producers do today, in the same pans, on the same coast.

A producer raking salt in the pans, Figueira da Foz

The commitment, said plainly

Bought fairly, from small producers

Silva Salt buys from small, independent producers in Figueira da Foz, and pays them a fair rate for their work.

A fair price is an income that lasts the year, not only the season. It means a producer can maintain their tools and their pans, bring in help for the heaviest work, and pass the craft to the next generation with their pride intact. Every jar sold is part of that.

Then & now

A craft worth keeping alive

Archival photograph of workers carrying salt from the pans by the basket, Figueira da Foz — ThenWhole families worked these pans through the summer, the salt moving by the basketful.Figueira da Foz, Portugal

A salt pan left to the reeds and the tide, Figueira da Foz — NowElsewhere, a pan left to the tide, its walls gone soft with reed.

Over the last century many of the pans fell quiet, as steadier work drew people away, and some sit still today. But the craft did not disappear. Where people still choose salt made the slow way, the pans are worked again.

Our hope is to see more of them come back to life.

Working salt pans with fresh pyramids of hand-harvested salt drying in the sun, Figueira da Foz

The dream

To see the salt gardens glisten

That is the dream, said plainly and held loosely. If enough serious cooks choose salt made the slow way, more pans come back to life and more producers stay in the craft.

Silva Salt cannot promise it. But every jar sold is a step toward it.

Daniel Silva as a boy in his grandfather's salt farm, Figueira da Foz

In Daniel's words

So I decided to do something

“It is hard to see the region that gave me those childhood memories slowly fading, especially knowing that our region's salt is extraordinary. So I decided to do something about it.”

— Daniel Silva, Founder