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Purely Organic

A key feature of the business

Purely Organic's success can be attributed to a large extent to the site on which its organic trout are produced for market. This is what's unique about their production methods.

The company's trout farm is located adjacent to a watercress farm. This, in turn, is fed by a natural supply of water from an ancient watercourse. The water, which flows at around 2 million gallons per day, is pumped underground to a reservoir and then on to the fish tanks.

The watercress beds at Longbridge Deverill are one of the key reasons for Purely Organic’s unique tasting trout. Image Copyright: Biz/ed Team.

So the water in which Purely Organic's trout are developed has passed through organic watercress beds, picking up nutrients as it goes, before supplying the business's fish tanks. The trout benefit from feeding on this naturally-occurring food. The owners believe that this is the secret to the flavour of their trout, which have been widely appreciated by many in the food business. As Tony Free says himself:

"I undertook some feeding tests of my own. I fed some areas of trout different amounts of feed so that I could weigh them and establish what weight gain I could expect for a given amount of food. I kept one area without food as a control and found to my astonishment that the trout that were not fed had put on more weight than any that I was feeding. I repeated the process and achieved the same results. The reason then became obvious - the fish must be getting food from the water but not only were they getting food but they were putting on more weight than those fish being fed conventional organic pellets. The food they were eating were shrimps and other small creatures that thrive in the organic watercress beds that our spring water first flows through."

For more on this see the section entitled 'What promotional techniques does the business use?'

So there's nothing 'fishy' about how this business has grown. Much of the 'secret' is down to an ancient water supply, a six and a half acre organic watercress farm and trout fed on an endless diet of shrimps!

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