1997 The Seagreens® project begins in London, with the development of seaweed production for human nutrition in Norway on the small island of Frøya in the Trondheim archipelago. The project is "to get a gram of our most nutritious native wild seaweeds into the population daily diet", to provide sufficiency and balance in micronutrients, and address widespread health concerns like cardiovascular disease and obesity. The corporate ethos is "to deliver goodness and value in all our relationships". 1998 Seagreens® first three consumer products are launched at the Natural Products Show in Brighton. Seagreens Ltd is the first British seaweed producer certified Organic, in Britain by the Soil Association, in Norway by Probio. In London, an independent taste test compares Seagreens® 'Culinary Ingredient' in oatcakes, against table salt and low-sodium salts. The Seagreens® oatcake is voted ‘best tasting oatcake’. Seagreens® is featured in The Low Salt Cookbook by Michelle Barriedale-Johnson, founder of the Free From Food Awards. 2000 In Norway, Seagreens' production is transferred to a factory in the Lofoten archipelago in Arctic Lapland, in a development partnership with Kjell Petterson, a qualified engineer and the designer of Seagreens® early mechanical harvesting technology. His company Nordtang, is Seagreens' first consortium production partner. In England, Ingrid Eissfeldt, an independent biodynamic baker in Whitstable, Kent with nationwide distribution, replaces salt in all her bread products with Seagreens® Culinary Ingredient. Her company, Artisan Bread, identifies the Seagreens® ingredient on consumer packaging and is Seagreens' first manufacturing 'Brand Partner'. 2004 Seagreens® moves its organic certification to the Biodynamic Association and its seaweed is approved for use in Biodynamic and Organic Foods and Farming Systems throughout Europe. First sales of Seagreens® for livestock and domesticated animals to biodynamic and organic farmers. Bart Spices of Bristol (now Bart Ingredients), Britain's largest independent spice producer and the first company to provide a Fair Trade spice to British supermarkets, wins a West of England Gold Award for its new Sea Salt & Seagreens® Seaweed table condiment, still available from Waitrose supermarkets. In Finland, nutrition products manufacturer Bioteeki, own-labels Seagreens® Culinary Ingredient as a Brand Partner and our first export customer. 2008 Seagreens is selected by the UK supermarket Asda, as a possible natural salt alternative for research in a £1.3 million UK government funded project to reduce salt, fat and sugar in manufactured foods. The research is conducted by the Centre for Food Innovation at Sheffield Hallam University, England. Early trials in bread and sausages show Seagreens® to be an effective natural bacteriostat prolonging shelf life more effectively and safely than salt, stabilising water quality, buffering pH balance, and improving nutrition. Studies continue in meat products, baked goods and ready meals, and reveal Seagreens' powerful antioxidant value which rivals other natural sources. An independent analytical study confirms Seagreens® seaweeds are uniquely safe for human consumption. Biodynamic Association certification is extended to the USA under US Biodynamic® and NOP Organic Standards. Unity in the corporate purpose “I see a unity of purpose in all we do which no longer separates the means of production from the product, or the whole human being from his means of survival. Our products can help restore and maintain the health of the whole person; our corporate mission is to honour the whole person in and through our business. The illusion that the values we uphold in business and personal life are incompatible, that there is one time and place for the sacred, and another for the profane, is not for me. Beyond the illusion of separation, I perceive a more joyous reality in which the relationship between all things is apparent” - S. B. Ranger, 2008. 2009 Production of Seagreens® begins in the British Isles, at a new factory on the Isle of Lewis in the Scottish Outer Hebrides through a joint venture with Martin Macleod and Malcolm Macrae. Using Seagreens® proprietary methods and technology developed in Norway, the factory is EU and FDA registered for the production of human food. Organic & Natural Business magazine ranks Seagreens "Britain's leading seaweed producer". Award-winning obesity research begins with a pilot study at Sheffield Hallam University. It is the first satiety study to use Seagreens® whole food seaweed, exactly as eaten by consumers, instead of extracted seaweed alginates, conducted by the same researchers. For the first time there are no negative side effects, but successful weight regulation with improved nutrition. 2010-15 The Scottish factory receives the Crown Estate Business Award for Marine Enterprise. The Sheffield obesity studies receive the Alpro Foundation Award. This, and official recognition the following year by UK Research Councils of Seagreens' salt replacement research as 'A Big Idea For The Future', highlights the potential of dietary seaweed to combat diabetes, cancer and heart disease. Further studies indicate that Seagreens® might help retard the pathogenesis of common chronic and degenerative diseases, including cardiovascular, obesity, diabetes, digestive, metabolic and inflammatory disorders. Peer-reviewed scientific papers are published in the Journal of Appetite (2012), the British Journal of Nutrition (2014), and the Journal of Applied Phycology (2015). Two independent reviews of international seaweed nutrition research, published in 2015 and 2017, both reference and confirm the Seagreens research and highlight seaweed nutrition groups of special importance in brain health. | 2011 In Scotland, an award for Excellence in Environmental Sustainability is received from Scottish Natural Heritage and the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency. In America, Seagreens' first overseas Distribution Partnership begins on Chesapeake Bay near Philadelphia, where Robert Pugaczewski and Caroline Jackson begin marketing Seagreens' nutrition products to doctors and clinics throughout the USA. Seagreens Trade Direct is set up in Forest Row, West Sussex, under the Direction of Paul Hoole and his colleagues, to warehouse and distribute Seagreens® seaweed ingredients worldwide. Seagreens' founder inaugurates the non-profit Seaweed Health Foundation for research, standards and public information, holding its first meeting at the Natural History Museum in London, home of the British Phycological Society. A series of baking trials and organoleptic studies with Sheffield Hallam University and Co-operative Food, shows that 75% of consumers prefer plain white bread, and 67% wholemeal bread, in which 50% of the salt has been replaced by Seagreens with no negative effect on bake or sensory quality. Based on medical and nutrition research, Seagreens® launches a consumer condiment, The Mineral Salt, a blend of 50% Scottish Seagreens® and 50% Cornish salt. It is voted 'Best New Product' by consumers and practitioners (Complimentary and Alternative Lifestyle magazine), 'Best Organic Product' (Healthy Living magazine), and is 'Highly Commended' in the Free From Food Awards. 2012 The most comprehensive analytical study of our native wild wrack seaweed species ever undertaken is completed, conducted by the Seaweed Health Foundation with Sheffield Hallam University and independent UK government accredited analytical laboratories. The same species, randomly collected from Seagreens, 3 different European seaweed producers and one in Canada, are fully analysed for all likely present nutrients and contaminants. The Seagreens® seaweed samples have higher nutritional values on all key markers, and fully comply with all current EU Food Safety Regulations. The other seaweed samples, although produced for livestock feed, were also available for human consumption. Seagreens® is independently certified Allergen Free and Kosher for Passover. Seagreens is ranked "most searched for ingredient" on the worldwide Life Science search engine, Innovadex. New Distribution Partnerships for Seagreens® manufacturing ingredients are agreed in Britain and Germany. Consumers and practitioners vote Seagreens® Food Capsules 'Best Vitamin and Mineral Supplement product' (CAM Lifestyle magazine awards). Seagreens® sponsors Seaweed for Health, a free-access public educational event at the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, organised by the Seaweed Health Foundation. The two-day event attracts over 1000 visitors from the British Isles and many other countries, and continues annually until 2019 when it is cancelled due to the Covid pandemic. Click here to listen to Seaweed, a Forgotten Food? in which Sheila Dillon interviews Seagreens' founder for BBC Radio 4 (scroll forward to start at 15.32). 2013 With imported seaweeds of unknown provenance, new artisan produced seaweeds of widely disparate quality, unregulated seaweed from industrial scale and new cultivated production, entering the food chain, and in the absence of any specialised standards including the EU organic regulations, discussions begin between the Seaweed Health Foundation and the Biodynamic Association to develop an international quality assurance scheme and standard for the production of seaweed for human nutrition, whether wild or cultivated. The aim is to provide consumers on pack with direct access to a minimum nutritional profile for certified seaweed ingredients, and transparency to total compositional data. 2014 Thyroid iodine research begun at Glasgow University in 2013, is published in the British Journal of Nutrition. Seagreens® wild wrack seaweed was trialled in iodine insufficient women of child-bearing age to asses iodine uptake and retention, and any effects on the thyroid gland. The project was organised by the Seaweed Health Foundation between the university, Seagreens, and Napiers of Edinburgh, a Seagreens® Brand Partner, using an actual consumer product, Napiers' Hebridean Seagreens® Organic Kelp capsule. The research showed a single daily 500mg capsule to achieve iodine sufficiency with no adverse effect on the thyroid and safe to use with the drug thyroxin. Iodine uptake in the body was conclusively shown to be approximately one third of seaweed iodine content, contrary to regulatory recommendations for iodine daily intake. Moreover, a comparison against the most commonly used iodine supplement, potassium iodide, showed Seagreens® gave a steadier, more stable absorption in the body, with any iodine excess to requirement being readily excreted. 2015 With the owners of the Scottish factory unwilling to pursue Seagreens' quality standards in production, and wanting to sell the factory, new partnerships are developed elsewhere in Scotland and Ireland, finally eliminating the use of fossil fuels, replaced by new air circulation technology, and broadening Seagreens' production to include two new native seaweed species. Seagreens takes over UK distribution of its ingredients following the decision of its consortium partner, Gee Lawson, to sell up, and a new partnership is formed with well established Organic Herb Trading in Somerset.
| 2016 The Nutritious Food Seaweed quality assurance scheme and standard is announced by the Biodynamic Association at the Foundation's annual Seaweed Health event at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. Seagreens begins production at a new location in Connemara on the west coast of Ireland. 2017 On the occasion of its Silver Jubilee, the Waitrose Duchy Organic brand introduces an oaten biscuit containing Seagreens® wild wrack seaweed. The first Duchy product was an oaten biscuit developed by HRH Prince Charles in 1992. For the first time, largely due to its German Distribution Partner, MaBitec in Hamburg, Seagreens is a net exporter of seaweed for human nutrition, with third party manufacturing customers in 12 countries. Brand Partner, Pukka Herbs, which includes Seagreens® in more than a dozen of its nutrition products, is acquired by Unilever. Seagreeens® production begins in Iceland, using heat energy from natural thermal springs. 2018 Seagreens' 20th anniversary can celebrate 5 production locations in the British Isles and Nordic region, 15 seaweed ingredient products of consistent quality across 5 seaweed species, and 9 nutrition products for consumers and practitioners. Of more than 100 manufacturing customers worldwide, over 75% identify the seaweed ingredient in their products as Seagreens®. The founder's nephew, Geoff Van Hurst, after 12 years in management with DofE, the Duke of Edinburgh's Award, joins the Seagreens team as Operations Director. A new technology development project commences which will enable independent seaweed producers in the British Isles and Nordic region to join and benefit from Seagreens® consortium. A new harvesting venture is begun in Scotland, and new marketing partnerships are established to distribute Seagreens® consumer products in Australia and the Balkans. Seagreens Trust is established, to formalise and support the international consortium of management, production and distribution partners in Seagreens International Partnership® with a consumer and partnership Council and a common Code of Conduct.
2019-22 The worldwide 'lockdown' to contain the Covid viral pandemic, provides time to re-asses, plan and deploy new strategies. Chief among these is the means to re-form and encourage local communities devastated not only by the pandemic but by the insidious shift away from 'bricks and mortar' to online shopping, and the longer term disruption of traditional societal behaviours generally. Seagreens conceives an equally long term retail strategy to provide each and every consumer with a knowledgable local Retail Partner and nutrition therapist or clinic, and a resource of useful information and continuing personal support. Central to the strategy is, for the first time, Seagreens own online retail facility, Seagreens.Shop, a pivotal means to identify and provide information to consumers. Yaeli Stern, a qualified ayurvedic practitioner and nutritional therapist, joins the Seagreens team. Seagreens Trust sets up Seagreens Harvesting Systems Ltd, an R&D vehicle to develop advanced harvesting and processing technologies for deployment among a wider group of consortium producers in the British Isles and Nordic region. 2022 Seagreens.Shop opens online. Seagreens first Retail Partner is established at The Village Health Food Store in Enfield, north London, where Jill Simpson has been retailing Seagreens® for 15 years. In Denmark, Brian Andersen sets up The Nordic Way retail and information website and introduces the Danish public to Seagreens® nutrition at Tangkrogen, a seaweed festival in Jutland, along with Denmark's own seaweed producers. Work begins to redesign and develop Seagreens information website and related social media platforms. The production technology development project begun in 2018 is provided grant funding and engineering support from the national Manufacturing Technology Centre at Coventry. Coventry is where the idea for the Seagreens® project was conceived, when the founder became involved in a factory there, producing seaweed for worldwide horticultural irrigation. 2023 Seagreens® 25th anniversary. |