The Beginning – Cold Processing
In 1992, Graham Lee and Family purchased Statfold Barn Farm, an arable farm in Staffordshire, with the ambition to grow more innovative crops and produce niche high quality oils. After installing a cold pressing plant on site, Statfold produced their first oils; Flax, Hemp, Borage, and Evening Primrose, all for the nutritional and food markets.
Deodorizing and Refining
Cold pressing is ideal for the cosmetic and nutritional markets as it is a chemical and heat-free process which allows the oils to maintain their natural nutrients and essential fatty acids. However, although our oils are of the highest quality, the natural colour and odour variances between batches made them unsuitable for certain brands and products.
To overcome this, we developed our own unique small-batch in-house refining and deodorizing plant. This allowed us to remove the elements causing the colour and odour inconsistencies while maintaining the quality and gave us the flexibility to tailor the process for every brand we work with.
Organically Certified
With the increasing interest in organically certified products, our next step was to achieve this accreditation. This enabled Statfold Seed Oil Ltd to produce a variety of Organic Cold-Pressed Seed and Fruit Oils which quickly became popular with the cosmetic, food, and nutritional industries.
In 1995 we purchased our first bottling, coding, and labelling machine; within 12 months our lines were busy contract bottling our expertly formulated organic flax and omega 3, 6, and 9 blends.
In 1997 we began globally sourcing a wide range of ingredients for the food and cosmetic markets. Our ever-expanding collection of organic and natural oils, butters, waxes, essential oils and extracts are all carefully selected by our team and work perfectly with our in-house cold-pressed oils to deliver a broad portfolio of products to our customers.
Looking forward to new ventures and expanding our already comprehensive portfolio of products and services.
In 2007 Graham wanted to concentrate on his love for steam engines (an impressive collection that you can see on a tour of our facilities!) and so daughter Julie and son-in-law Henry Noon made a bid to purchase the company. Soon after, the two became sole owners of Statfold Seed Oils Ltd and joined with the ambition to bring in other bespoke services to this established business.
The goal was to introduce a new service for full contract development and manufacturing for a range of natural and organically certified personal care products including ready-to-go formulations and products bespoke to a customer brief.
We started investing, improving, extending, and adapting our premises including building an onsite laboratory, and installing a variety of machines for mixing, filling, labelling, and coding products. This facilitated the production of both small and large batches of leave-on and wash-off formulations for both small runs and larger volumes.
With our newly acquired accreditations and licenses, and investment in our technical team (including fully qualified cosmetic chemists) we started to build a large customer base producing a wide variety of formulations that are mixed, filled, and packaged on our site in Staffordshire.