fp Turks and Caicos

A once small business from Salt Cay is making its debut in Providenciales and Grand Turk.

Salt Cay Salt Works is expanding its delightfully homemade creations of salt goods.

When Heidee Williams  and her husband visited Salt Cay back in 1993 for a scuba diving vacation, she knew that the island was something special and kept calling her to return, year after year. In 1999, Heidee and her husband purchased an old salt raker cottage ruins and build a small island getaway home.

In 2010 while visiting Grand Turk on a shopping trip with a friend, they noticed a display of bath sea salts and scrubs that were being sold but not made locally, and she thought to herself, “This should be done on Salt Cay!” The rest is history.

Williams and a friend began collecting buckets full of beautiful, sparkling sea salt that had been formed naturally right in Salt Cay’s “backyard,” and she enlisted some island neighbors, now endearingly called the “Salt Ladies,” and began to make and mix all kinds of wonderful salt products.

“The Salt Ladies” of Salt Cay Salt Works create formulas and mixtures for bath salts and scrubs that are gentle on the skin with scents that are pleasing and refreshing. They create soaps that are attractive in design, yet fragrant and sudsy for practical, everyday use.

The group also produces culinary salts such as the gourmet finishing salt Fleur de Sel line, or their deliciously flavored cooking salts and even a lime sea salt for the rim of your Margarita.

What started as a little idea, Salt Cay Salt Works now employs six people on a regular basis, along with opportunities for many folks to collect salt or recycle bottles, producing usable salt products and packaging and decorating containers for our clients for extra income.

The local business has been growing steadily and will soon have a workshop where the “Salt Ladies” can work in a cool and comfortable setting, protected from sun and rain to keep creating their cultural crafts. The workshop will be tucked in a special place in Porter’s Backyard and have plenty of storage and work areas for the growing team.

Distribution of the salt is also set to increase after the announcement that two new retail clients have been added to its roster. The Bohio Gift Shop on Grand Turk and Art Provo on Providenciales have now added Salt Cay Salt Work merchandise to their shelves.

“For many years, Salt Cay was the center of the salt industry in the Caribbean, and a rich heritage remains for the people who call Salt Cay home,” Williams says. “Drawing from the history of Salt Cay, it is my mission to use renewable, organic resources to create unique products for today’s modern world.”

It won’t be much of a surprise in the near future when folks from all over the world will be salting their foods, baths and skin with the clean, sparkling salt from the ponds on Salt Cay.

To order your own Salt Cay Salt Works merchandise, contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or visit The Bohio gift shop on Grand Turk or the Art Provo shop on Providenciales.