Our Story

Over 2008 to 2009, Steenbergs focused on developing its Home Baking range around the organic Fairtrade vanilla extract, including almond extract, organic peppermint, orange, lemon extracts and organic rose water and orange flower water. To these, were added arrowroot, bicarbonate of soda and cream of tartar.

However, the defining event for these 5 years was the Flood. In December 2010, after a long hard winter of snow and ice with temperatures down to -18^oC, the water pipes could not withstand it any more freezing and burst just above the office. Nothing in the warehouse or production was touched and all data was backed up. But everything else in the office was trashed – paperwork, computers, technical files and accounting. It was a real kick in the teeth and took us a while to get everything back up and running again, particularly as it was just before Christmas.  But the phones worked and none of the products were affected.

The upside was that it allowed us to redesign the workspace and refresh everything. Not only did we get a new office, but we started investing in machinery rather than doing everything by hand. So, the next few years were spent on commissioning semi-automated filling and labelling machinery which enabled Steenbergs to become more efficient and to get some cost benefits from larger batch runs.

With continued expansion, it became necessary to create extra space, so a mezzanine floor was installed in the warehouse at 6 Hallikeld Close during 2013.  This may not sound very earth shattering, but it allowed all packaging to be moved out of the main warehouse space and into its own dedicated area, enabling us to store everything else more efficiently.

In 2013, Steenbergs launch the UK’s first Fairtrade saffron. This was a great product, but it became too hot to handle as it came from Iran, so we no longer can do that line. In 2014, we launched a range of loose-leaf herbal teas, our range of gifts in jute bag replaced hampers and proved remarkably popular, while the organic and Fairtrade hot chocolate range had a makeover, with new labels and their own fancy black tins.

After several years of developing our own stringent. internal technical and quality systems, Steenbergs became SALSA certified in January 2015. This resulted in us briefly working with Ocado but it was unprofitable for us because there was almost no traction in sales, so we removed our products from there, a useful lesson for us that working with supermarkets was not going to happen, nor was it beneficial.

In 2016, Steenbergs took on an extra building at 11 Hallikeld Close, literally across the yard. With help from Leeds Enterprise Partnership, we built a tea packing area with its own storage, hygienic packing space and a form-fill filling machine for loose leaf teas, and a space for picking and packing of internet and Amazon orders.

In conjunction with these factory changes, Steenbergs teas got a complete make-over. All Steenbergs loose leaf teas and herbal tisanes became available in retail-ready cardboard cartons, bulk bags and we redesigned our black tins.

In January 2017, Steenbergs became certified or accredited for some of its products under halal, kosher, and vegan rules.  However, at the end of the year, we decided not to continue with halal certification, even though our products are almost all suitable for those on a halal diet.

In February 2017, Steenbergs bought Old Hamlet Wine & Spice Co.  Old Hamlet Wine & Spice Co is a complementary spice business, with a focus on the gifting market where Steenbergs had not traditionally focused. Old Hamlet Wine & Spice Co had been making mulling spices and other drinks-related mixes since 1974, moving into Fairtrade mixes in 2006. It was too exciting to miss.

Tough times. Very tough times. We kept our heads down and somehow kept going. The work environment was dominated by external political factors – the slow torture of Brexit, COVID and wars in the Ukraine and the Middle East – and private matters – Axel’s father died and Sophie had breast cancer which was sorted.

Business wise, the main things have been: a slow rebranding exercise that has given Steenbergs a new look and a total makeover that we feel gives us a brighter, more nature oriented look; a tighter focus on the UK instead of looking at exports; a focus on direct supply rather than using UK and EU suppliers which has improved supply chain transparency; and becoming BCorp in 2022.

Our focus has been that we’ve been quietly resetting the branding of Steenbergs. We realised during COVID that we’d got as far as we could with the business as it was currently positioned. We’d grown naturally to a decent size with the focus having been on the products themselves doing the selling, so a ‘no nonsense, no marketing’ attitude. We wanted to shift the brand to something more colourful and more evocative of the natural value of the spices, herbs and teas that we packed. Whilst we knew and thought deeply about the impact of our products on the environment, this feel did not come through into our product packaging at all.

So, it’s been a somewhat painful process of getting to the core of what Steenbergs is and how to express that on screen and on pack, developing a new brand image, a brand document and then translating this into new packaging for the extracts, spices and herbs then teas – in that order. And finally, this had to be scooped into a new website. It’s been a very hard process, a much harder process than we’d expected.