Our philosophy

Axel and Sophie Steenberg started Steenbergs Organic in 2003 with a sharp focus on building an organic spices and organic teas business with deep green credentials.

We have grown this start-up from an Internet shop into one of the leading organic and Fairtrade spice businesses in the UK.

We are now 11 people working from a purpose-built 4,750 sq ft organic spice factory outside of Ripon in North Yorkshire, close to the A1. Our environmental principles are deeply held, so the factory incorporates many eco-features, including low water usage toilets, 100% green energy, solar tubes, natural linoleum, carbon neutral carpet tiles and phone services from an ethical phone co-operative.

Steenbergs offsets its excess carbon footprint, including all transport in, staff travel (to and from work) and transport outwards through Climatecare. We believe that we are one of the only UK food businesses that already has a zero carbon footprint , and we have been so since 2006. There's still more to be done, but we're working on this - more recycling, better packaging and solar heating are all being addressed.

Since the outset, we have worked hard to get our supply chain right. This has meant building a genuinely new spices and herb supply chain, bringing new growers to the European marketplace. Over 80% of our raw material purchases are direct from growers or their agents - all of it organic and much of it Fairtrade as well. We have one of the largest organic supply networks working with over 30 different groups across Africa, the Mediterranean and India/Sri Lanka, with more in the pipeline.

This supply chain is core to Steenbergs Organic - without it we couldn't provide provenance to field and without it we couldn't, hand-on-heart, control quality - a purely systems based approach that relies on paper trails is largely meaningless in remote farming regions.

But we have taken this commitment even further.

Steenbergs Organic was one of the originators of Fairtrade spices, working closely with FLO-Cert in Bonn and The Fairtrade Foundation to develop standards and bring on growers of spices. As a result, we were the first UK Fairtrade spice business , becoming a Fairtrade trader for spices in April 2005 along with 2 Italian groups; we launched the first range of Fairtrade spices to the UK market in June 2005 and developed first organic Fairtrade vanilla extracts and we remain the largest trader in fair-trade spices for the UK marketplace, striving to bring in new producer groups to market all the time.

At Steenbergs Organic, we have taken on board the need to bring organic and Fairtrade spices to a higher quality standard. So all our imports undergo rigorous laboratory testing and we work closely with our suppliers to improve their standards - whether that's bringing in hair nets or installing magnets and metal detection equipment. Steenbergs Organic has one of the widest range of heat-treated, low micro count spices and herbs on the UK/EU marketplace, enabling us to supply high care, cold processing food producers as well as ensuring our organic spices and herbs are safe-to-eat.