David proctor — Antarctic Royal Seafood - UMARA

I’m an Australian food producer focused on unlocking more value from one of our most underutilised seafood resources, sardines.

For over 16 years, I built Doctor Proctor’s into a national meat snack brand, supplying more than 4,000 outlets across Australia. That business taught me how to build distribution, understand customers, and most importantly, how products actually move in the real world.

But more recently, my focus has shifted from land to sea.

Through connections in South Australia, I came across a traditionally produced sardine fish sauce made in Port Lincoln, a region home to one of the most sustainable sardine fisheries in the world.

What stood out to me wasn’t just the product itself, but what it could become.

Rather than treating it as a commodity, I saw an opportunity to reposition it as a 12-month fermented garum, a product with far greater relevance in modern kitchens. By refining how it was presented and introduced to chefs, the product began to move out of bulk use and into a more considered, culinary space.

That shift, from low-value output to high-value ingredient, is what drives my work.

Building on that foundation, I’ve developed a concentrated powdered version of the garum, a format designed for precision, consistency, and ease of use in professional kitchens. It’s used as a finishing ingredient, in the same way chefs might use bottarga, caviar or truffle, adding depth, salinity, and umami in a highly controlled way.

The broader goal is simple:

To take an abundant, often overlooked Australian resource, and demonstrate its potential as a premium ingredient through fermentation, product development, and thoughtful positioning.

This next phase of development is being built under the UMARA brand, focused on a range of umami-driven ingredients designed for both chefs and food manufacturers.

At its core, the work is about creating more value, not by changing the resource, but by changing how it’s understood and used.