A Dining Table, 34 Tonnes of Salt, and a Dream: The Story of Oryx Desert Salt
There are founder stories that arrive polished, and there are founder stories that arrive with sand in their boots and a toddler on the hip. Samantha Skyring’s is the second kind. Before Oryx Desert Salt landed on Whole Foods shelves, was served on JetBlue and Amtrak, and made its way into 23 countries, she was a young mother walking out of an abusive marriage with a small child and the kind of clarity that can emerge after a difficult chapter of life. What she did next is the story of a woman who decided to build on the other side.
The 120km Namib Desert Walk That Inspired Samantha Skyring’s Oryx Desert Salt
In July 2000, Skyring laced up her boots and walked 120 kilometers across the Namib Desert to the Skeleton Coast, spending seven days on foot through some of the harshest terrain on the continent. Somewhere along the way, she came face to face with Oryx gazella, the gemsbok antelope that thrives where almost nothing else can, and what she learned about the animal would stay with her for years. The oryx can move through desert heat without drinking water for long stretches at a time, yet it cannot survive more than a few months without licking salt; in the Kalahari, sodium chloride and trace minerals play an essential role in survival. Years later, when a colleague introduced her to a salt pan deep in the Kalahari, that walk came back to her.
Why Samantha Skyring Sold Her House to Buy 34 Tonnes of Kalahari Salt
After leaving the marriage and starting over from nothing, Skyring made the kind of move people only tell you about after it works. She sold her house, used the money to buy 34 tonnes of Kalahari Desert salt, moved into a garden shed with her toddler, and began packing salt grinders by hand on her dining table. There was no investor pitch, no soft landing, no fallback, just a mother, a product she believed in, and a runway she was determined to stretch.
That period is what gives Oryx its weight today. Skyring has said the hardest moments of life are also the clearest redirections, and that perspective threads through everything the brand touches. Oryx never grew on hype. It grew on substance, one farmers’ market, one health shop, one conversation at a time.
The growth of Oryx Desert Salt has been driven by Sam’s passion and vision and facilitated by 12 years of mentorship and investment contribution by Evolve Capital – brothers Ian and Garth Solomon – also 5 years being supported by Pape Funds – for which Samantha is very grateful.
Inside the Ancient Kalahari Salt Pan Behind Oryx Desert Salt
About 250 kilometers, or 155 miles, from the nearest town, beneath the Kalahari Desert in Southern Africa, sits a remote underground brine aquifer, fed by streams flowing through Dwyka rock formations geologically tested at 250 to 300 million years old. The brine gets pumped up, poured onto open pans, and left to the Kalahari sun, which in summer reaches 47°C, until in about four weeks, one lunar cycle, the salt crystallizes naturally, with no additives, no anti-caking agents, no aluminum silicate, and no dextrose.
What makes the salt different is also what isn’t in it. Studies suggest roughly 95 percent of sea salt tested today contains microplastics, a reflection less on any one brand than of the simple fact that modern oceans carry pollution and microplastics. Oryx sits outside that variable entirely, because it is a desert salt, not a sea salt. The source is sealed underground, naturally insulated by hundreds of millions of years of geology, isolated from modern ocean exposure, with its full natural mineral profile intact.
Image Credit: Oryx Desert Salt
Why Oryx Desert Salt Is the Mineral-Rich Salt the Wellness World Reaches For
Skyring talks about salt with the kind of reverence most founders reserve for fundraising rounds. Sodium, she’ll remind you, is the third most essential element the human body requires, right behind oxygen and water, functioning as the body’s primary electrical conductor, the thing that keeps nerve signaling, muscle contraction, and cellular function actually running.
Oryx Desert Salt naturally contains potassium, magnesium, and dozens of trace elements alongside sodium, delivering electrolyte minerals in the ratios nature intended. It is why the wellness, biohacking, and clean-eating crowd has embraced it, and why some athletes have made it part of their performance routines, because potassium and magnesium are the difference between sodium the body uses and sodium that just sits there.
Why A Michelin-Starred Chef Prefers to Cook With Oryx Desert Salt
Oryx earned its culinary credibility the old-fashioned way: chefs tasted it and stayed with it. Jan Hendrik, South Africa’s first Michelin-starred chef, has said no dish in his restaurant is complete without a pinch of Oryx Desert Salt, and Craig Cormack of SALT restaurant at Waterford Wine Estate uses it daily as both a cooking salt and a finishing salt. The grind is gentle, the flavor is rounded, and the minerality shows up without being overpowering which is what every cook is really looking for. It is a high quality product that does not feel inaccessible, which is part of why it has made its way into everyday households, restaurants, and travel cabins alike.
The Refill-First Grinder Keeping Over 1.2 Million Bottles Out of Landfill
Built into Oryx is the philosophy of refill, reuse, real value, and the refill story sits at the center of how the brand thinks about both sustainability and value. The signature grinders use a long-lasting ceramic mechanism rather than a plastic one, meaning plastic doesn’t degrade into your food over time, and each grinder can be refilled more than twenty times using Oryx’s refill boxes, which sit alongside the grinders on the shelf as part of the core offering. That model saved 1,224,900 grinder bottles from landfill in 2025 alone, which is a meaningful number for a brand of its size.
How Oryx Desert Salt Gives Back to the Kalahari’s First Nation Communities
What turned Oryx from a product into a lifestyle is what Skyring decided to do with it once it was working. A percentage of every sale supports the Khomani San and Mier communities of the Kalahari, the First Nation of that land, through the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, alongside Project Biome, a regenerative Earth-rewilding initiative working to restore the connection between human and ecological health. The team itself tells its own story, with Oryx now employing more than 45 people, the majority of them women.
What Samantha Skyring Built on the Other Side of the Hardest Chapter of Her Life
Oryx Desert Salt made its American debut on Whole Foods shelves about five years ago and has since expanded to Amazon and Shopify, with presence on JetBlue, Amtrak, and distribution in 23 countries, but the most interesting part of the story isn’t the shelf placement. It’s the woman behind it, and what she chose to build on the other side of the worst chapter of her life. For anyone watching her trajectory, and especially for any woman in the middle of her own difficult turning point, that’s the part worth holding onto.
Today, Oryx Desert Salt grinders and refill boxes are available at Whole Foods Market stores nationwide across the USA. Designed with long-lasting ceramic grinder heads, each grinder can typically be refilled more than 20 times, reflecting the company’s long-standing focus on refillable, everyday kitchen products.
