What’s in a name?

Newlyn processor Nick Howell was the brains behind the reinvention of the traditional Cornish catch of pilchards, which “conjured up images of tins, tomato sauce and school”.

Pilchards were traditionally a mainstay of Cornish fishing: salted, pressed and packed into wooden barrels and boxes, for centuries they were shipped all over Europe. But they fell out of fashion and in 1995 only seven tonnes were caught off the Cornish coast, says Nick Howell of the Pilchard Works, a local processor.
Back then, Nick did some market research to find out why people didn’t like pilchards, and found, not surprisingly perhaps, that they “conjured up images of tins, tomato sauce and school”. However, people did like sardines, “which reminded them of beaches, BBQs and sunshine.” (In case you were wondering, pilchards and sardines are the same species. Essentially, the differentiator is size: smaller fish are called sardines and the larger, older fish are called pilchards.)
So Nick set about rebranding pilchards as Cornish sardines in 1997, working closely with retailers such as M&S, which was an enthusiastic early adopter. “It made a huge difference and other merchants and boats soon caught on. We also worked to make the tinned sardines taste better and to make the tin look appealing we put a Newlyn painting on the front,” says Nick.
He was also instrumental in lobbying for Cornish sardines to get their own EU PDO (Protected Designation of Origin), like Melton Mowbray pork pies. Now Cornish sardines are an increasingly successful product, widely available in supermarkets and often sold fresh as well as in cans – ideal for the BBQ. Around 2,000 tonnes are landed a year, a huge step up from that tiny total 20 years ago.
“It shows the benefit of marketing, which smarter fisherman are catching on to,” says Nick. “Traceability is key. You can find pork from Jack Jones farm and it’ll tell you the breed’s Gloucester Old Spot, but our fish is just labelled Cornish fish.” He celebrates that “at last” some fish and lobster are now being tagged to identify the catcher, “but there’s no reason why it shouldn’t apply to all fish landed,” he says. It separates out the arguments – who is industrial fishing, who is line-caught fishing – and whether their techniques are environmentally friendly.”