Salt Manufacturing Process in India: A step-by-step guide

India is the third-largest producer of salt in the world, generating approximately 30 million metric tonnes annually. Behind this output is a well-established salt production process that combines natural geography, solar energy and modern processing technology. For buyers and industry observers, understanding how a salt manufacturing company produces salt in India, and what separates a rigorous operation from a basic one, provides essential context for sourcing decisions.

Step 1: Salt pan selection and brine management

The salt production process in India begins with geography. Gujarat’s long coastline, flat terrain and arid climate make it the country’s most productive salt region. A salt manufacturing company in Gujarat typically operates thousands of acres of salt pans, where seawater or saline groundwater is pumped into interconnected shallow evaporation pans sequenced by salinity. As water moves through the system, it concentrates progressively until it reaches the crystallisation pans. Skilled brine management at this stage determines the purity and consistency of the raw salt that follows. At Super Salts, our salt pans span over 5,000 acres in Bharuch, Gujarat.

Step 2: Solar evaporation and crystallisation

This is the heart of India’s salt production process. From October through May in Gujarat, sun and wind evaporate water from the concentrated brine, leaving behind salt crystals. Temperature, wind speed, humidity and brine depth all affect crystallisation rates and crystal size. Constant monitoring is required to ensure optimal output. Solar evaporation is both cost-efficient and environmentally sustainable – it uses natural energy and generates no industrial emissions, making it the preferred method for large-scale salt manufacturing companies in India.

Step 3: Harvesting

Once the salt layer reaches sufficient depth and purity, it is harvested, mechanically, using scrapers and harvesters, or manually – and stockpiled at the salt pan before being moved to the processing facility.

Step 4: Washing and refining

Raw salt contains surface impurities like clay, silt and biological matter. Washing with saturated brine removes these without dissolving the crystals. For higher-purity grades, washing is followed by full refining: dissolution in clean water, brine filtration and re-crystallisation under controlled conditions. This step is essential for any salt manufacturing company producing food-grade or pharmaceutical-grade output, achieving NaCl concentrations of over 99%.

Step 5: Drying

Refined salt is dried, via solar drying, mechanical rotary or fluid bed dryers, to reduce moisture to the levels specified for each grade. Moisture control is critical: excess moisture causes caking and shortens shelf life, while insufficient moisture can affect the handling properties of finer grades.

Step 6: Iodisation, grading and packaging

For edible grades, potassium iodate is added at 30 ppm per FSSAI standards, requiring calibrated equipment and in-process testing for uniform distribution. Salt is then screened into defined particle size grades – fine, medium crystalline, semi medium crystalline – before anti-caking treatment and packing into consumer packs, institutional bags or bulk formats. Every salt manufacturing company producing edible grades maintains dedicated iodisation equipment and full lot-level traceability.

How Super Salts applies this process

At Super Salts, every stage of the salt production process, from our 5,000-acre Gujarat salt pans to our 50-acre Jambusar facility, is managed in-house under documented quality procedures. Our laboratory tests each stage systematically, and our daily output of 1,500+ metric tons reflects a salt manufacturing company built for scale without sacrificing consistency.