Health firm Rheal Superfoods is expanding into a new North East base as demand for its powders and protein bars soars.
Sean Ali and Charlotte Bailey braved Dragons’ Den two years ago and sealed investment from two of the millionaire panellists, after telling how they established superfood blends firm Rheal to aid their own health struggles. Their blends aim to help support immunity, digestion, skin health, energy and focus, and can be added into smoothies, shakes, salads, yoghurts and drinks.
Instead of continuing with the Dragons’ Den deal, the pair secured £1m through a Seedrs crowdfunding campaign to help drive expansion. And last year set up a second operation in the US, splitting their time between Los Angeles and their South Shields home, after securing private investment from former TV Dragon Tej Lalvani.
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Now the pair have revealed the business is bursting at the seams at its original base in Gateshead, prompting expansion into new warehouses in Washington. The firm initially had two facilities in Gateshead and last year opened a third warehouse nearby on the Saltmeadows Trade Park.
Rheal Superfoods, which recently achieved B Corporation status, has now taken possession of unit TB29 at the Turbine Business Park in Sunderland, giving the firm 29,418sq ft of space in a 12-year lease. The new warehouse will allow the business to grow as orders for their products increase.
Ms Bailey said: “We moved into our Gateshead premises in March 2021. With the immense growth we’ve experienced as a business since then, we quickly ran out of room. We were borrowing space from other empty units on the estate, but this wasn’t efficient at all. We knew inevitably we would have to move into a much bigger space, if the perfect unit became available.”
“We have 15 team members in our warehouse now, who manage all of our order fulfilment, distribution and some product manufacturing, but we’re always looking for more people to join our team, so we can continue to keep up with the demand.”
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The warehouse deal marks one of two sealed by industrial agency teams at HTA Real Estate and Avison Young, Newcastle, who were appointed by Copley Point Capital to market four units which have the recently completed business park. Bathroom Cladding Centre Ltd has taken a 10-year lease of the 20,000sq ft TB20 unit which was completed last week.
Phil Mordey, managing director, said: “We are absolutely delighted to have relocated to one of these new units, which will more than double our capacity for stock holding, allowing us to have great product availability.”
The Turbine Business Park scheme has 168,000sq ft of space in all across 8.6 acres, based at the junction of the A19 and A1231 Sunderland Highway. The remaining two units have 51,000sq ft and 68,000sq ft of space respectively.The units have a BREEAM rating of very good and an EPC rating of A which will provide typical energy savings of circa 70% compared to a similar building from the 1980s or 1990s.
Danny Cramman, director at Avison Young, added: “The scheme provides some much needed industrial/warehouse space to help address the current demand/supply imbalance in the North East.”
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