Super Foods Ltd formed in 2003 with the aim of building brands in functional nutrition beginning with ellactiva®, a brand designed to serve the health and wellbeing needs of women. The management team have impressive backgrounds with companies such as Procter & Gamble and have built a number of brands in the fast moving consumer goods sector.

Investment of £220,000 was raised to enable the company to launch its first product ellactiva® calcium chews, a superior calcium supplement for women. This was introduced via a small test market at Boots in April 2004 and is now sold in over 900 stores including Boots, Holland & Barrett, Sainsbury’s and Waitrose and there is an exciting pipeline of products in development.

“EMBA helped us develop our proposal, raise the investment and structure the deal. A key contribution of EMBA was to help structure a simple deal that was attractive to investors while provided sufficient incentive to the team. We used a combination of equity and loan stock and left equity unsold to allow for a later round at better valuation. Importantly, one of the investors has come on board and is a great asset to our business.”

Now with a successful test market of their first product and four major accounts on board, Super Foods is ready to seek additional funding to expand the brand nationally and to introduce further products.

“As EMBA has stayed close to the business post investment and has a good understanding of where we are and where we are going, it will be much simpler to embark together on a new round of funding.” – Marcelo Bravo MD.

“Investing as a group of investors directly in exciting situations like Super Foods, is far more rewarding than investing passively through a fund manager, and the potential is far greater. The management team are capable, ambitious and experienced in growing strong fmcg brands.” – Iain Bradley investor.