Yurrita Group started as a family business in 1867, producing and selling fresh, salted and pickled fish and distributing it from Mutriku, using horse carts locally and railway transport at longer distances. The original factory was simply set up in the basement of the family home, known as Casa Mauleón.

Yurrita exports to more than sixty countries, in the 50s the company became especially reputed in the USA, Australia and Japan. Yurrita group became the US provider in 1956 and was actually one of the pioneers to enter the Japanese market.

The Yurrita family learned the anchovy trade from Italians. In the early twentieth century, a group from Sicily, attracted by the anchovy in the Bay of Biscay, came to work in the village of Mutriku every spring. They rented space in the Yurrita factory for their annual production of anchovies.