One of TEDCO’s original Start & Grow businesses, Seaweed & Co. continues to flourish in 2020. With two new additions to the team in October, the Whitley Bay based enterprise is now targeting significant growth and expansion in the coming year.
Leading UK supplier of seaweed products, Seaweed & Co. has added two new recruits as the business continues to grow its sales and increase production capabilities. Liam Sherriff (pictured with Craig) has joined as Commercial Manager and comes with 8 years’ experience in nutrition and nutraceuticals, having founded his own nutritional supplement business 7 years ago before leaving mid 2019. The company has also hired Alexander Maclean as Production Manager up at the company’s manufacturing base in Scotland.
Seaweed & Co.’s organic seaweed ingredients and products are sustainably harvested from the pristine sea lochs of the Scottish Outer Hebrides and have become the go-to seaweed brand by offering healthy and convenient ways to benefit from seaweed. The business was established by leading seaweed experts and its work is research led and supported by state-of-the-art production capabilities.
Dr Craig Rose (aka Doctor Seaweed) founded the business back in 2015 and, with the help of TEDCO Business Support through both the Start & Grow programme and a Virgin StartUp loan, Dr Rose set about showing the world that seaweed isn’t just a weird ingredient synonymous with Asian cooking. Instead, it’s a wonderfully healthy and natural source of essential nutrients including iodine which supports normal thyroid health and metabolism.
Craig and his team have developed the PureSea® range of seaweed ingredients, supplied globally as a food ingredient to the likes of PepsiCo for flavouring or salt reduction, as well as the Doctor Seaweed’s Weed & Wonderful range which includes high quality organic supplements and delicious seaweed-infused culinary oils.
The business has also benefitted from the backing of Kaiser Chiefs frontman Ricky Wilson, a childhood friend of Craig’s, as well as ongoing support from industry experts who form part of the company’s executive board.
After agreeing a major distribution contract and developing listings with the likes of Holland & Barrett, Boots and QVC amongst others – surging demand meant Craig needed to bolster internal resources and increase headcount.
Craig said:
“We’ve been growing over 100% year on year for the last couple of years and we were getting to the point where we needed more people in the business. Having Zander come in and manage our production based on the Scottish Outer Hebrides will help keep up with demand, whereas Liam will bring a significant amount of expertise and experience from the nutraceuticals industry which will help shape our consumer products business going forward.”
“Not only will the additional hires mean we can fulfil larger commercial opportunities, the additional emphasis and focus on Doctor Seaweed’s Weed & Wonderful will help grow our retail listings and launch new products.”
Want to know more about the great work being done by Dr Rose and the Seaweed & Co. team? Visit www.seaweedandco.com or to try their innovative range of award-winning supplements, visit www.weedandwonderful.co.uk.