Seed supplier triples production capacity and doubles headcount

An East Yorkshire seed company has tripled production capacity and grown the business by more than a third in the past year after building a new purpose-built facility.

Family business Greenland Seeds has completed it’s first year at its new 21,500 sq ft production facility in Newport and has enjoyed sales growth which has also seen staff numbers double.

First founded by Chris Hoff in Gilberdyke in 1997, Greenland Seeds supplies seed mixes to growers, farmers, merchants and retailers across the agriculture and horticulture sectors.

The business grew quickly after Chris’s son, Mike Hoff, took over as managing director in 2020.

Mike said: “We have a 10,000 sq ft building in Gilberdyke but we realised we would need more space to grow the business and decided to create a purpose-built production site in Newport.

“This new building, coupled with the Gilberdyke facility, has really helped to turbocharge the business. We’ve been able to scale up production and carry much more stock.

“We’ve only been in a year, but we’ve already seen sales grow by more than 30%, we’re dealing with new customers across the globe and we’ve created new jobs for the community.”

The new building means the company can now process and blend more than 150 species of grasses, wildflowers, herbs and legumes through five different mixing lines.

In the past year, the firm has doubled staff numbers to 20 and has started exporting to and importing from multiple countries around the world.

Mike added: “We are still very much a family business and I run the company with my sister Nicola, but we are very ambitious.

“The renewed Government focus on restoring our landscapes through schemes such as the Countryside Stewardship Scheme and the Sustainable Farming Incentive means we are ideally placed to support growers and farmers and also support the push for food security.

“With our partnerships across the globe, we’ve not only been able to find growth in a challenging landscape for agriculture this year, but we’ve also been able to support farmers in the UK by finding the crops they need that will deliver a profit.

“We’ve had a great first year in the new facility, but it will allow us to grow further and that means we will also be able to create further employment opportunities.”

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