This sea salt could cost you
more than 30 times the price of table salt.
Unlike the cheap salt that's mined across the world,
this salt is all harvested by hand
in one remote region in the Northwest of Iceland.
So just what makes it so expensive?
This is Saltverk.
It's a sea salt factory in the Westfjords of Iceland.
Housed in one of the most remote
and coldest locations in the country,
it produces 10 metric tons of salt each year.
The salt takes at least a week to make,
and almost all of the work is done by hand.
But there's one other thing that's unique
about the way that it's processed.
Everything is powered entirely by geothermal energy.
Petar Stakic: We use the geothermal energy that we have
available here in the Reykjanes Peninsula,
which are one of the purest seawaters in the world.
We are moving the water from the fjord
into the big building here that we have outside.
In each pool we have radiators.
Through the radiators, the hot water from the spring
circulates and heats up the seawater.
And as the water from the seawater evaporates,
the concentration of salt gets higher.
The tanks are run on hot water.
The pans are run on hot water.
The drying room is on hot water.
The heating for the factory, for the houses,
everything is run on hot water.
It is green as it gets.
Narrator: The process of making sea salt is simple,
but it takes a lot of work.
Salt is made by heating seawater to evaporate the water
and increase the salt level.
Sea salt has been produced like this for thousands of years.
Water pumped directly from the sea
is naturally about 3.5% salt,
but it needs to reach about 26%
before the water is saturated and salt begins to form.
The water is first preheated
until it reaches a salinity level of about 20%.
Stakic: The whole process of making salt here
takes, from sea to salt, from seven to 10 days,
depending on the weather and the time of the year.
We get better results in the wintertime
because of the lower humidity,
because the frost takes out the humidity.
And it's harder in the summertime. As you can see,
we have a really high humidity and rain.
So it's really hard to evaporate, because this,
Iceland, is not a place where you usually make salt.
Narrator: Once it's reached this point,
it's moved to large pans and boiled.
When the water hits 26% salinity,
it becomes completely saturated
and salt crystals start to form on the surface.
These crystals slowly sink to the bottom of the pans,
where they're drawn and drained of any remaining liquid.
The salt is spread evenly on drying trays
and moved to a large oven to dry for over 12 hours
before being sifted and packaged for sale.
Salt has been an important part of Icelandic cuisine
for hundreds of years,
and many treated it as a currency.
Although sourcing salt isn't quite so hard these days,
the tradition of salt making still remains.
Stakic: During the 17th century, the Danish king
had his salt-making factory in this region,
and he was also producing salt here.
And it was an important part for the economy of the island,
as it was used for preserving food
over the long winter months
and also for export of fish and cod.
In those times also, it was considered as valuable as gold.
There was a law introduced here in the 17th century
stating that people, while working as salt makers,
were prohibited of having wife
or children or a family,
because it was seen as a distraction from work.
It just shows how important it was to them.
Narrator: The final result is a very minimally processed,
flaky sea salt from clear Icelandic waters.
Unlike processed rock salt,
the sea minerals remain in the crystals,
but these are only a tiny percentage of the final product.
Producing any product in such a remote location
has its difficulties, which contributes to the price.
But with Saltverk featuring exclusively
at some of the world's best restaurants
and their production process leaving a 0% carbon footprint,
consumers will continue to pay top dollar
for pure Icelandic sea salt.