Since last Monday trucks and tractors can be seen in the Natural Park of ses Salines in some ponds working to extract this year’s salt production, which according to José María Fernández, director of Salinera Española in Ibiza, “will be good”. “If nothing unexpected happens,” he says, “we expect to reach 50,000 tonnes“, practically the same harvest as 2020, when 52,000 tonnes were recorded.
The harvest is in line with demand from Salinera Española’s main customers: 20,000 tonnes will be used for road de-icing in Scotland and England, 15,000 for cod salting in the Faroe Islands, 10,000 for canning in Galicia and 5,000 for the chemical industry in central Europe. In addition, the Ibizan salt industry has exhausted the surplus it had accumulated from other years. As 2020 was a bad year for the salt mines that Salinera Española operates in Murcia and Alicante due to adverse weather conditions, those in Ibiza gave up their reserves .
In the current conditions of the ses Salines ponds, a harvest of 50,000 tonnes determines whether the year has been “acceptable or not”, says Fernández. The current salt extraction is little compared to that of the beginning of the last century, when in one year up to 90,000 tonnes were extracted, something unthinkable today.
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