The crabmeat is processed by cooking live crabs that are caught off the Devon and Cornwall coast. They are killed either by a knife through their mouth or overnight in the fridge. The crabs are then put into plastic baskets and placed into one end of a tunnel boiler with a water temperature of 96°C to 100°C. Every 4 minutes a basket of crabs is added to the boiler pushing the previous basket along. After 36 minutes the basket of crabs exits out of the opposite end of the tunnel boiler where the basket of crabs are then washed with water and then dipped in ice water to stop the cooking process.

After 20 minutes the crabs are tipped onto a table where the claws are separated from the caracus. The white meat at the end of the claws is taken of by hand and placed into a stainless steel bowl. The claws are then spilt into two pieces where one end is picked with a spatula and the other end is then cracked by hitting the crab shell with a stainless weight, which splits the shell away form the meat. The crabmeat is then separated from the cracked open claw and placed in stainless bowls. Once the bowls are full the handpicked white crab is weighted and taken to a blast chiller to continue cooling.

Once the claws are removed the remainder of the body is then opened. The legs are removed from the caracus and spilt into three. The tips are thrown away and the rest of the legs are taken away to have their meat extracted by compressed air. Once the meat has been extracted they are placed into the blast chiller.

The caracus or purse as it is otherwise known is then cleaned by using a knife to remove the lung sacks and shell and then sprayed with tap water. The white crabmeat is then extracted by compressed air. The white crabmeat is blown into a vacuum system that collects all the white crabmeat in a stainless steel vessel inside a fridge. After 1 hour the crabmeat is removed from the vessel and placed in the blast chiller. When the temperature of the crabmeat is less than 5°C the white crabmeat that is purse meat, blown leg meat and hand picked claw meat is mixed together into white plastic trays where the white meat is then ready for weighting. The brown crabmeat is then placed into a mincer and the minced product is collected into large stainless steel bowls ready to be weighted.

The mixed white crabmeat and minced brown crabmeat is weighted to the customers requirements. The individual packs of crabmeat are labelled with product, date of production, use by date and storage information telling the customer to consume the product within 2 days of opening the pack.

The packed crabmeat is placed into polystyrene boxes, iced, taped and sent on the fish transport lorries to various wholesalers around the UK . The boxes of crabmeat are with the customer the next morning. Customers will also pick up the crabmeat from the premises usually the day after ordering. We have also got a freezer van to transport any goods to our market stall.